


The Fifth Test: Keeping It Simple

by kutubiyya



Series: An Indian Summer [5]
Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: Aftercare, Angst, Bacon, Broady is nosy, Collars, Consensual Kink, Darts, Drunkenness, Jealousy, M/M, Smut, Snuggling, Spanking, and having sex to avoid actual talking, confused boys being confused about their feelings, feelings that they definitely don't have, hangovers, keeping it simple are you boys?, or the promise of same, reeeeally, strip darts, you know the drill by now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 21:57:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5842474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kutubiyya/pseuds/kutubiyya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Alastair chews his lip for a moment, thumbs hovering over the screen of his phone, thinking of muttered promises and last-minute kisses and all the things they didn’t quite manage to do in Manchester.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Thinking, also, of what they agreed in Manchester: that they’ll keep things simple.</i>
</p><p>--</p><p>With the series on the line and teammates edging closer to the truth, everything has come down to the final Test, both on and off the field. Alastair's made a promise he can't keep, and Jimmy's playing with fire - but, most importantly, those darts aren't going to throw themselves. (The Oval, August 2014)</p><p>Updated weekly on Fridays; chapters one, three and five are definitely nsfw. As usual, all reads, comments and kudos welcome. Preferably all three ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to twistsofsilver/twowittoowhoo and knockmeforsix/labonnetouche for their help with various aspects of this <3
> 
> For the benefit of anyone who's stumbled in here through tags, a) don't worry, you don't need to know a thing about cricket, and b) [see here](http://kutubiyya.tumblr.com/post/136947883047) for photos of my leading men (from spring 2015); Alastair is standing on the left-hand side of the top pic (and on the right of the lower one), and Jimmy is standing on the left in the lower pic. Meanwhile, [this is a bloody wonderful gifset](http://paddlescoop.tumblr.com/post/137424686740/england-win-the-third-test-by-7-wickets-and) showcasing Alastair's arms, Joe's cheeky charm (he's the blond one, he'll be appearing in later chapters), and Jimmy's, um, game face. That's from this month.

_I can’t believe life’s so complex_  
_When I just wanna sit here_  
_And watch you undress_  
\--PJ Harvey, ‘This Is Love’ ([lyrics](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pjharvey/thisislove.html); [listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD5_Q1EK9pU))

 

\--

They had two full days off between the fourth and the fifth Tests. Normally, with such a short break, Alastair would’ve taken it easy, but instead he threw himself into any work he could find around his in-laws’ farm. There was never a shortage of things to do, in mid-August, which was lucky, because he had a lot of thoughts to drown out.

Late in the evening of the second day, strolling back to the farmhouse with Wellington boots caked in mud and a pleasant ache in his shoulders and his calves, he felt a vibration in the back pocket of his jeans and admitted to himself, at last, that he’d been waiting for this; or hoping for it. Why else would he have bothered to carry his phone around the farm with him for the past few days? The text was innocuous enough – Jimmy asking Alastair to bring his dartboard to London with him – but it stopped Alastair in his tracks, for a moment, because it meant the other man was thinking about him.

Alastair replied, _will do_ , because he didn’t have the heart to tell Jimmy that he’d brought the board to every Test of the summer so far, without ever quite finding the words to suggest that they play. Then he swallowed back excitement, and guilt, and set his face for the farmhouse once more.

The following day, he’s emptying his suitcase into the glossy wooden drawers of the seventh – or is it the eighth? – hotel of the summer, and has just propped the dartboard against the wardrobe when his phone buzzes from the desk beside the television.

There have been a few instances today of what Alastair’s been trying not think of as false alarms – a call from Pete, texts from Joe and Broady – but this time it really is Jimmy. Alastair pauses to take a breath that turns out to be embarrassingly shaky, then taps on the message.

_Got any plans for the afternoon?_

He’s not smiling like a fool. He’s not.

 _no_ , he writes, _already done media things just unpacking now_

_On your own?_

Some combination of coyness and wariness – of not wanting to look too eager – makes him text back: _yes why_

_Am about half an hour away, depending on traffic. Might stop by and distract you when I get in_

Okay, now he _is_ smiling like a fool. He chews his lip for a moment, thumbs hovering over the screen, thinking of muttered promises and last-minute kisses and all the things they didn’t quite manage to do in Manchester.

Thinking, also, of what they agreed in Manchester: that they’ll keep things simple.

So, a flirty gauntlet, then: _you’re welcome to try_ , he types, then drops his phone back on the TV desk and heads for the shower with a grin, discarding his clothes as he goes.

He knows, after all, what _distract you_ means.

\--

Jimmy feels like he should probably be more irritated with Ali’s last message than he is. Ali playing hard to get falls squarely in the _brat_ column, and by the rules he’s established he shouldn’t be rewarding or encouraging stuff like that; he shouldn’t find it a turn-on, and he certainly shouldn’t be smiling vaguely at the rear bumper of the car in front of his.

He chucks his phone into the passenger seat, drums his fingers on the steering wheel, turns up his music, and focuses on the road, determined to leave enough time before he replies to draw a silent line of disapproval under the comment.

 _Tries_ to focus on the road. Mostly he’s remembering Ali’s bathroom in the last hotel; that brief, breath-held interval when he watched Ali without Ali realising he was being watched, the other man standing there at the sink in just his jeans, forearm muscle taut as he squeezed rain out of his shirt, illuminated and visible from every angle because there were mirrors _everywhere_.

The way his own stomach lurched when he heard himself say _You’re beautiful_ , and realised just how fiercely he meant it. (It wasn’t just the arms, it was the tongue-tip peeping out between his lips, too; there was just something so… so _Ali_ about it. Absolute concentration, however trivial the task.) The split-second of startled delight on Ali’s face before sense reasserted itself, his and Ali’s both, and he watched embarrassment crowd everything else out of the other man’s expression; before Jimmy blurted out whatever jokey bollocks came into his head, to diffuse things.

It’s not like he hasn’t said the word around Ali before. And it’s _true_ , anyway, Ali is beautiful; no-one in the world could dispute that. Beautiful, but also sort of faintly, endearingly ridiculous, with his awkward running between the wickets – like, as Swanny once said, Woody from _Toy Story_ – and his love of dumb jokes and his unwavering focus on tiny things most people wouldn’t even think twice about.

The beauty might be intimidating, even offputting, without the ridiculousness.

When Jimmy next meets stationary traffic, he decides he’s waited long enough. Time to take control of the exchange. He gropes for his phone, briefly pictures Swanny mocking him over what he’s about to write, and sends (because why the fuck not), _What are you wearing?_

Three Bluetones tracks go by – he’s on a bit of a Bluetones kick, at the moment, for whatever reason – without a reply. Jimmy keeps his gaze off his phone, focuses on the start-stop traffic, tries not to imagine Ali laughing himself sick or looking confused or showing the message to someone else (Joe).

When a text does finally come back, it’s profoundly disappointing:

_haha_

And even though Jimmy (sort of, kind of) intended the original as a joke, he’s fed up enough at being made to wait ten minutes for _that_ , that he replies: _I mean it_

_guess ;)_

That’s an improvement, even if it’s still a tease. _Nothing?_

_in your dreams_

Jimmy snorts. _Once or twice_ , he thinks, but what he types is, _Jeans & tshirt by any chance?_

_ding ding we have a winner_

_Okay_ , Jimmy thinks. _Here goes_. He taps out a reply, but can’t send it straight away, because traffic suddenly starts moving again. (And he’s having second thoughts. He _has_ done this sort of thing before, but it was a long time ago, and somehow it feels different, the idea of it, with Ali.) Eventually, he makes himself hit send without looking at the screen, as if somehow that’ll make it seem more casual: _Take them off_

Ali’s reply arrives quickly.

_what?_

Jimmy swallows, trying to picture Ali now: is he standing with one hand on his hip, or sprawled on his bed? Is he flushed, are his eyes wide, is he smiling?

 _You said I’m the winner_ , Jimmy writes, _so I’m choosing my prize. Take your clothes off_

_are you texting one-handed? how are you driving im worried about you_

Jimmy laughs, reading that, then realises that the brake lights in front of him have gone off, and hastily drops his phone into his lap, so he can release the handbrake. He needn’t, it turns out, have worried; the line of traffic rolls through the junction so slowly that only three cars make it past the lights.

He sighs, watching cars streaming by in front of him. (How are things moving so quickly on that road? Where are they going, and can he go there instead?)

He has a lot of time to decide what to say next.

 _Stuck in traffic_ , he writes. _Mind wandering. Thinking about you being ready for me when I get there_

The lights change. “Over to you, Ali,” he mutters, chucking his phone back into the passenger seat and putting his foot down, determined to make it across the junction this time.

\--

Well, Alastair reflects, as he sits down, rather heavily, on the quilted satin throw at the foot of the pristine hotel bed; he’s got what he wanted.

He doesn’t know when text messages became so fascinating. He’s never really seen the appeal – just another way for him to struggle with words – until this past week.

But he’s come to relish the anticipation when he sees Jimmy’s name appear on the screen; the buzz he gets from the other man’s directness. The strange, private, illicit pleasure of seeing it there, black text in a yellow speech bubble, words sent out into the world rather than a fleeting whisper in his ear. He likes the idea of Jimmy committing these things to writing, the idea that Jimmy’s thinking about him – about this – even when they’re not in the same place.

There’s a trust in that, expressing things in a way that lingers; in a way others might see.

A trust Alastair is breaking, because he isn’t deleting the messages like he knows full well Jimmy wants him to. He’s kept the ones they exchanged in Manchester; has read back over them a few times, smiling and guilty, late at night. At home.

So, yes: he’s wanted more. He hasn’t quite pictured anything like _this_ , though.

He plays with the hem of the black t-shirt he’s only just put on, running the fabric back and forth between his fingers so he can feel the stitching of the seam against his skin.

Maybe Jimmy’s joking. He’s _probably_ joking. Right?

But Alastair is remembering Jimmy describing a fantasy, back in Southampton, and he’s thinking about other ways he can be _ready_ when Jimmy arrives.

So, for the second time in twenty minutes, Alastair closes silver-grey curtains and strips off his clothes. He does it slowly, this time, thoughtfully, aware of his body – of cotton dragging up over his back, of the ways his arms move – as if Jimmy is there in the room, watching. He realises he’s shifted position, subtly, so he’s leaning backwards, torso stretched out to emphasise muscle, rather than hunched over to create squashed rolls of skin beneath his ribs. His face heats, at this – at how Jimmy has changed him, or brought this out of him – but he knows that his face isn’t the only place that blood is rushing to.

He unfastens his belt, and stands, easing his jeans past a newly sensitive groin, taking his time as if Jimmy really were in the room, enjoying the tantalisingly gradual release of pressure. He folds the jeans and the t-shirt, carefully, lays them on the desk chair in full view of the door. Then he slips off his tight cotton pants – waistband snug as he pushes it down over his arse, elastic grasping at his fingers, making him think of restraint – and adds them to the pile.

Three paces up to the top of the bed; three paces putting him _just_ out of view of the door, which is down a short corridor formed by the bathroom and the built-in wardrobe, with its polished doors of inlaid wood.

He takes a deep breath, glances at his phone, and fishes in the drawer by the bed – more shiny inlaid wood, like the rest of the furniture – for the new bottle of lube. He pushes metallic grey and pale silver cushions aside, and sits on white sheets.

He starts out with the familiar, with the thing he could do in his sleep. Slow, squeezing strokes of his cock, working himself to full hardness as he pictures Jimmy’s fantasy in his head: of himself ready, so Jimmy can just walk in the door and take him, there and then, no fuss, no preliminaries, no words; no waiting.

Alastair _likes_ the preliminaries, mostly, and he certainly knows they’re necessary. But this is something different, something potent, a short cut; it conjures slow flames of arousal to lick at the muscles of his groin and his gut. He lets go of his cock, before he can get carried away.

The next stage is more awkward. He finds himself shifting around, restless and uncomfortable; shivering at the touch of cool lube against his skin, struggling to find the right angle, feeling embarrassed even though he’s alone in the room. Eventually he settles on kneeling, shins pressed into the mattress, leaning against the headboard – but it’s not a board, this time, it’s a metal frame with slender vertical bars, and that makes a difference. He pushes a hand through one of the gaps, bracing the underside of his wrist against a cold, hard bar and curling his fingers into a fist around the one next to it, and this time when the lubricated fingers of his other hand go back between his legs, embarrassment is subsumed by more urgent thoughts.

Lips pressed tightly shut and breathing heavily through his nose, he pushes the tip of his middle finger inside himself, just up to the first knuckle or so. The skin is soft, but the muscle underneath it is surprisingly firm, clutching at the digit. And it doesn’t feel as good as when Jimmy does it – how could it, without everything else that goes with that, the warmth and the smell and the weight of the other man – but there are some advantages. Alastair can respond to sensation more quickly, can follow where it tingles and avoid what stings, can push in and slide out at his own pace and hook his finger around skin and muscle to stretch himself carefully, can tell when he’s getting close to his prostate—

( _oh_ ; so _that’s_ what it feels like from inside)

He rocks his hips, now, seeking more pressure against that bump, pushing in a second finger, pulling his wrist harder against the restraining bar of the bed frame, wishing for the first time that he had something thicker and more solid than his own fingers to press into him, something that could more reliably reach what he’s after, and stretch him open properly at the same time; something closer to the way Jimmy feels inside him.

He presses his mouth against his shoulder, smothering a groan as his brain wanders unbidden down this path, imagining it, imagining having a toy to fuck himself with while Jimmy watches. It wouldn’t be the same as actually being fucked by Jimmy, but in the depths of fantasy it has a certain humiliating appeal: himself all moaning and shameless and performing in a way he’d probably never dare in real life, while Jimmy sits perfectly still with that half-smile on his face—

Alastair opens his eyes, retreating from that, back into the reality of what he’s doing. His knuckles are white around the metal bar, fingernails biting into the heel of his hand, and he’s grimly pleased with himself for hanging on to it, for not surrendering to the temptation to get himself off, like he so urgently wants to. Between his legs, he pushes in a third finger, opening himself wider, but taking it more slowly, now, more methodically: settling himself down, finding a rhythm that keeps him near the edge, but not too near.

And he enjoys, in its own way, the self-discipline of patience. He’ll wait; he’ll wait for Jimmy, and the end result will be more satisfying than anything he can do to himself.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

The knock at the door makes him catch his breath; his heart hammers as he cleans his hand with a wet wipe, slides carefully off the bed, and pushes himself to his feet. He feels a little unstable, the circulation in his legs all confused by the position he’s been in, and his arousal so strong that walking to the door feels oddly like wading. The grey carpet is soft; his bare feet leave prints behind, darker shapes in the pile, as he pads down the narrow tunnel past wardrobe and bathroom.

The main door, like the wardrobe and all the drawers, is made of two types of wood, polished to a rich gleam: a darker, redder, chestnut-coloured border inlaid with a lighter wood that has a heavy grain the colour of brown sugar. Alastair stops himself staring at it and pushes the little metal disc back from the peephole, just to check it’s really Jimmy out there. The other man is looking down at his phone, typing something, and a moment later Alastair hears his phone buzz from beside the bed. When Jimmy glances up again, he looks vaguely bored.

Panic shoots through Alastair’s belly. What if Jimmy really _was_ joking?

If so, Alastair may actually die of the embarrassment. Too late now, though; _in for a penny_ , as Broady likes to say.

“In for a pound,” Alastair mutters under his breath, and reaches for the handle.

He hides himself behind the door as he opens it, as best he can in the narrow space, just peeping round far enough to see Jimmy’s expression slide from bemused to intrigued to lascivious. About two seconds after that, the door’s closed, and there are arms around Alastair and the scent of Jimmy’s cologne and the mouth he’s been imagining, and there’s a stray elbow and a brief clash of teeth, too, but it doesn’t matter, all that matters are the eager hands roving over his skin.

The first kiss doesn’t last long. “You _did_ it,” Jimmy says, in a stage whisper, and his smile turns arch. “Thought it might be a bit much for you.”

“So did I.” Alastair can’t help but grin; partly out of relief that the gamble’s paid off. “Guess not. Not anymore.”

Jimmy traces Alastair’s cheekbone and jawline with rushed kisses. “Mmm. Corrupted.”

Alastair has to smother a chuckle against the other man’s cheek. “Used to be all innocent,” he manages eventually. “So well behaved.”

Jimmy hums against the skin behind Alastair’s ear. “And now you’re well behaved in a different way.”

The quiet words and the gleeful assurance of the tone – coupled with the hand sliding down through wiry hair of his groin – make Alastair press his mouth to skin and stubble again, but not because he’s laughing, this time. When fingertips brush his cock, Alastair feels Jimmy’s grunt of surprise as much as he hears it.

“Also,” says the other man, more loudly, “ _really_ horny already.”

Alastair kisses him, briefly, to shush him, then whispers, “Remembered what you said. In Southampton.” He hears himself slur the words. “About wanting to find me ready and waiting. Some time. Well. Ready now.”

The hand goes questing further between his legs, and Alastair feels a finger slip inside him, hears a sharp intake of breath from Jimmy.

“You sure?” he murmurs. “Like this, right now?”

“Right here,” says Alastair, and he’s nervous but he means it, even so.

Then he’s being turned, he’s being crowded up against the door. He gets his forearms up – one at chest height, the other up above his shoulders – to brace himself, and has to exert substantial strength to preserve some breathing space. An insistent hand at his jaw coaxes his head round and this time there’s no grin to disrupt the kiss, just the heat and the weight of the other man. Alastair tastes the other man’s tongue and voices a tiny sharp cry of need in his throat as Jimmy’s other hand kneads his arse, roughly, a single finger pressed hard against his hole.

The hands withdraw – but the mouth doesn’t – and there’s some shuffling and wriggling behind him and then skin against skin and the hard lump of Jimmy’s cock poking against his backside. Finally Jimmy does break the kiss, and Alastair opens his eyes to see that the other man has shoved his trousers and pants down as far as his knees, and is tearing open a foil packet with some haste. Alastair has just long enough to register the fact that he’d forgotten all about a condom – good job one of them’s thinking clearly – and then Jimmy’s repositioning him, drawing his hips away from the door so he’s bending over, slightly. Alastair looks away; adjusts his forearms against the door, feeling a tiny bit guilty at the marks he must be leaving all over this carefully polished wood, and leans his forehead into the pillow of them as he feels Jimmy line himself up.

“Got to be honest,” Jimmy mutters, into the nape of Alastair’s neck. “Daydreamed about this. More than once.”

And then. It’s not as quick as the fantasy, obviously – Alastair could only do so much with his own fingers – but it _is_ quick. Jimmy’s squeezing his way inside and he’s groaning and then he’s moving and it’s been weeks, weeks, since Alastair had this rush of sensation, this strange feeling of fullness and intimacy and prickling tingling sparking up inside him, since he heard himself grunting softly at each new thrust and had to grit his teeth to keep the noise muffled. But the grunts are only half the battle, now, because the door’s rattling in its frame, tell-tale rhythmic thud and metallic creak of hinges; _crap_ , he thinks, _someone’s going to hear_ —

Alastair spreads his arms across the wood, spreads the weight, the force, presses against the door as hard as he can to hold it in place. Once he’s managed that, he has to stay absolutely still if he’s going to keep holding the door: has to let Jimmy have complete command of the pace. And he likes this, a task to concentrate on, a challenge but not really a challenge, he just has to hold the door and let everything else be done to him, let himself be fucked hard and fast and deep. Jimmy’s hands are tight at his hips and his mouth’s at Alastair’s ear and whatever Jimmy’s saying keeps getting lost in his groans and then his teeth are sinking into Alastair’s shoulder and the door rattles again as Alastair loses control of even that in the force of Jimmy’s climax.

Alastair bears Jimmy’s weight on his curved back and in his braced arms, feeling the throb of the bite on his shoulder and listening to the other man pant and gasp his way back down from his high, with a glow of satisfaction and just the tiniest thread of impatience.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he hears himself say. Okay, maybe not so tiny.

Jimmy chuckles. He reaches up to stroke one of the arms that’s holding them both up. “Brat,” he murmurs, and his voice is full of lazy smiles. “Gorgeous greedy brat.”

“Hey,” says Alastair, craning his neck to look round. Jimmy’s got his head pillowed between Alastair’s shoulderblades, eyes closed. “Less of the _brat_. You wanted a quickie, I _gave_ you a quickie.”

“Brat’s got… lots of meanings. Different contexts. Can be good.”

Alastair snorts. “I’m too horny to pick my way through that,” he says, and reaches down to take hold of his own cock.

He would’ve sworn Jimmy still has his eyes closed, but somehow the other man reacts immediately.

“Let me,” he says, shifting, batting Alastair’s hand away. Alastair releases a breath as Jimmy starts to toy with the head of his cock. “My job. Deserve a reward.” Jimmy’s mouth closes over the bite he’s left on Alastair’s shoulder; the tender skin is soothed with lips and tongue. “Sorry about this. Should’ve asked.”

Alastair closes his eyes. “I’m reserving judgement. Until I see it properly in a mirror.”

He leans against his forearm once more as Jimmy’s hand curls around his cock. Truth is, the bite felt quite good – a counterpoint to other sensations – and it feels even better now it’s having attention lavished over it. But Alastair doesn’t want to encourage Jimmy until he knows how obvious the mark is. There’s the dressing room to think of.

He feels Jimmy shift, again, this time from his hips, like he’s going to pull out; moves swiftly to wrap an arm around the other man’s lower back, holding him in place.

“Don’t,” Alastair says, quietly.

He can’t quite bring himself to explain – that he wants Jimmy inside him when he comes – but the other man gets the message, starts to rock against him, instead. Jimmy’s cock is softening, rapidly, but there’s still enough life there to press up against Alastair’s prostate, amplifying the sensation of the hand moving up and down his shaft.

Alastair swallows, savouring this, then gathers his breath, and compensates for his neediness with a tease. “Anyway, it’s true. I _do_ deserve it.”

Jimmy’s hand moves with purpose, now. “True, but not the point.” He draws Alastair’s face back round. “You’re getting cheeky. Think we need more discipline.”

His kiss is firm, but Alastair can’t hold it for long; has to stop to moan against Jimmy’s jaw. “Sure,” he mutters. “Any time that’s not _now_.”

“So cheeky. Shouldn’t stand for this.” But the rhythm of Jimmy’s hand isn’t faltering one bit, and the lips seeking out another kiss are curved in a smile.

Alastair grins, as a thought occurs to him. “Cocky, you might say.”

This time, Jimmy does stop. “That’s—” He snorts, then visibly fights to control himself. “That’s the _worst_...”

Alastair loses it, mostly at Jimmy’s half-affronted, half-desperate expression. As Jimmy mutters a steady stream of protest above his head (“Stop it. Stop trying to make me _laugh_. I’m not going to _dignify_ that with—”), Alastair gasps his amusement – as quietly as he can – into Jimmy’s angular shoulder, until he’s struggling to stay upright and his neck’s aching from being twisted at such an odd angle for so long.

Then Jimmy’s pulling Alastair into him, away from the door so he’s off-balance and forced to lean back against Jimmy for support. An arm across Alastair’s chest holds him tightly as the hand at his cock finishes its work quickly – so quickly it takes him by surprise, and a sharp, short cry escapes him before he can stop it.

Later, he’s not sure how long, Jimmy’s lips are back – gently – at the bite on his shoulder. A hand’s stroking his belly, lazily. As his body calms down, Alastair can feel the slight burn, between his legs: muscles that haven’t had a workout like that in a few weeks. He’ll be sore, later.

“Well,” he says, “I feel like I’ve been _thoroughly_ ravished.”

Jimmy huffs a laugh. “ _Thank_ you,” he says. “For letting me.” He sighs; his breath is cool where he’s left Alastair’s marked skin damp. “Every Test should start like that.”

Alastair turns in Jimmy’s arms, gets a gentle thumb brushing his chin, and a slow kiss.

“Thank you,” Jimmy says again; more softly this time. His pale brown eyes are thoughtful. “I don’t know what—”

He stops, looks down. Alastair holds his breath, thinks about keeping it simple.

And says, “Fancy a game of darts?”

Jimmy’s gaze comes back up to meet his. He laughs, warmly. “Thought you’d never ask.”

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three things:
> 
> 1) The epigraph. The lyrics could not be more perfect; the song title... perhaps less so, at least in my view. But it's up to you to read as you want; after all, the author is dead (in a Barthes sense, not literally, at least to the best of my knowledge).
> 
> 2) The setting. I gather, from an interview with Cook from several years ago, that the team usually stay at the Grange City Hotel (a place whose website, intriguingly, boasts that, “A select number of female friendly rooms are also available, which include special amenities for female travellers and businesswomen”; gee, thanks), when they're playing at the Oval. So the layout and decor for Alastair's room is based a room pictured [on their website](https://www.grangehotels.com/hotels-london/grange-city/bedrooms/), with one self-indulgent change, namely a headboard with bars.
> 
> 3) Alternative title for this part - 'The Fifth Test: Darts and Chill'. You'll see why.


	2. Chapter 2

It’d be nice to think that, by now – heading into the final Test in a five-Test series, with a team that has spent most of the summer playing together – the first morning of training would be a simple, straightforward thing. That it’d all move like a well-oiled machine.

Not even close.

Alastair isn’t even two steps inside the door of the changing room at the Oval when he has to sway backwards, sharply, to avoid getting clocked with the bat Joe’s brandishing somewhere near his shoulder.

“Sorry!” Joe spins away from his audience – Gary and Jos – and throws his arms around Alastair, nearly taking his head off with the bat a second time. “Just re-enacting… Did you _see_ Durham against Notts yesterday? Stokesy hit a hundred and three, it was _brilliant_!”

“I, uh… No. Too busy.” Alastair feels colour flood his cheeks as he tries not to think about what he was _actually_ doing yesterday afternoon instead of watching the One-Day Cup on TV. “Glad to hear he’s—”

He doesn’t get chance to finish that, or to disentangle himself properly from Joe’s enthusiastic apology squeeze, because there’s a tapping on his shoulder, and he half turns to meet a face even redder than he imagines his own is: Chris Woakes, looking flustered.

“Cooky,” he says, “you seen my short-sleeved training shirt? I can’t find it _anywhere_.”

As Joe dives back into his tale of Ben’s exploits, Alastair squints at Chris, suppressing the urge to ask why the fact that he’s captain would mean that he’d know where anyone else’s clothes are. “Don’t you have more than one?”

“Yeah, but this is a _particular_ one, it’s got this stain on the neck, and it’s lucky, I wore it—”

A ball of white and dark blue fabric hovers into view, held by a freckled arm; Ian’s.

Chris’ face lights up as he grabs for the t-shirt. “ _Thank_ you! Oh my god, where did you _find_ it?”

Ian’s beaming. “You left it at Edgbaston yesterday…”

Smiling, Alastair moves on through the room. He waves in response to calls of “Morning, Cooky!”, gives the thumbs up when someone shouts “Got a minute for a chat, Cooky?”, and ignores “Cooky, which net am I batting in?” (thinking _Lists, this is why there are lists, right there on the wall_ ). He ducks under the ball CJ tosses to Mo; checks himself and steps back, briefly, to get out of the way of a fleeing, cackling Finny and the laughing Sam chasing him; and keeps his smile as neutral as he can when he nods, across the room, at Jimmy, who is sitting calmly watching the chaos.

Even when he finds himself a spare square inch to drop his kitbag, he still spends the next fifteen minutes fielding more questions, fixing a twisted strap for Gary, laughing at one of Joe’s jokes, and helping Pete to get the lads moving, before he finally carves out a moment or two to sort out his own pads and scurry out after them all.

Almost at the doorway of a dressing room now suddenly, blessedly quiet, he hears Jimmy’s voice.

“Where do you think _you’re_ going?”

Alastair stops, curling his fingers up inside the white sleeves of the tracksuit that he’ll soon realise it’s too warm for. He swings his arms by his sides as he looks back at Jimmy over his shoulder. The other man’s eyes are narrowed, and there’s something about his tone; Alastair’s not sure what it is, but it’s already making his breath come short.

“ _Apparently_ there’s a training session about to start,” he says. He gives into the teasing smile that’s been tugging at his lips since Jimmy spoke. “Thought I might go and join, you know, my team?”

He turns away again, daring Jimmy to come and stop him; hoping he will.

Three quick steps sound behind him, in the time it takes him to dawdle one. An arm clamps around his waist, and it’s not budging for anything, neither appeasing pat nor playful push. He’s pulled in tight to the other man; breath against his neck makes his skin prickle.

Jimmy murmurs in his ear. “He’s always hanging around you.”

“Hmm?” Not what Alastair was expecting, and frankly he hasn’t a clue what Jimmy’s talking about, but he’s much more interested in what Jimmy’s _doing_ than what he’s _saying_ , just now. Alastair draws in an ostentatiously long breath and stretches, pushing his shoulders back against Jimmy’s, and rolling his hips. “Who?”

He slides his hands down Jimmy’s arms: the taut one at his waist, the other dangling free at his side. Jimmy takes the bait, grabbing first one of Alastair’s wrists, then the other. Jimmy’s fingers are rigid as cuffs, and he wraps both arms around Alastair now, criss-crossing his torso. Alastair gives up a gasp to the still air, feeling heat building quickly; muscles tightening. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve this, but he wholeheartedly approves of it.

“Bet he couldn’t do this, though.” Jimmy’s lips are on Alastair’s neck, now, on his jaw. He’s pushing one of Alastair’s hands downwards, grip transferring from wrist to the back of Alastair’s hand, fingers interlacing; he’s forcing Alastair’s palm down between his own legs, confronting him with his own rapidly hardening need. “Bet he couldn’t turn you on this quickly.”

Alastair huffs a laugh, low and croaky. “No-one could.” He rolls his head back against Jimmy’s shoulder, turns his flushed face to Jimmy’s, as best he can. “No-one.” He’s smiling again, lazily, languid in Jimmy’s grasp; vaguely wondering who this mysterious _he_ is, but mostly assuming it’s a game, an excuse.

“Don’t you forget it,” Jimmy mutters against Alastair’s parted lips, then he’s kissing him deeply enough to make Alastair slightly weak at the knees. Keeping hold of Alastair, allowing him not the slightest bit of control.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Alastair says, when he’s finally released, and left to calm down by himself as the other man disappears into the sunshine outside.

He’s still not sure what happened to prompt this game, but he _is_ sure he wants to play it again.

\--

It’s late afternoon of the same day when Jimmy starts to think that maybe the darts thing has its pitfalls.

The problem isn’t so much standing behind Ali, as the other man throws his darts at the board fixed to the back of the hotel room door (although yes, he looks especially good with his shirt pulled taut across his shoulderblades, and yes, there’s plenty of arse to stare at as well). The issue isn’t standing off to the side, either, although Jimmy gets a better view of the flexing arm that way, and also how Ali’s lips part when he’s concentrating.

It’s that he both wants and doesn’t want to kiss him.

The case in favour: Well, he’s alone with Ali. How could you _not_?

The case against: Apparently darts and snogging aren’t all that compatible. Or Jimmy doesn’t know how to juggle them, at any rate.

Yesterday, they made it through a grand total of one full game. (This despite the fact that they’d already _had_ sex, up against the exact same wooden door from which the dartboard’s now hanging, before they started playing.) They were just starting a second game when they got distracted. (Okay, he distracted Ali.) Ten minutes later, they were on the bed, chuckling and stroking and tickling, giddy but unhurried. Forty minutes or so after that, Jimmy was lying drowsy and contented with one arm trapped under Ali’s lower back, wondering if he could get away with a quick nap before they resumed the game.

At which point Ali’s phone buzzed on the bedside cabinet. A grimace crossed the other man’s face when he picked it up to answer it, but his voice as he said _Absolutely, absolutely, I’ll be there_ was nothing but politeness, and Jimmy felt like he could see Ali changing, in the space of a few sentences: shedding his languor, sitting up straighter; putting on his captain armour, his public face.

(This despite the fact that Ali’s cheeks still bore a post-orgasmic flush and his naked, hairy thighs were painted with his own come and Jimmy’s, intermingled.)

 _Got to go_ , Ali said, reaching behind him to pat Jimmy’s forearm, without looking back. When Jimmy asked where, trying to sound casual, Ali just shook his head and said, _Duty calls; ECB thing_ , and wandered round the corner to the bathroom.

And Jimmy? Jimmy was left wondering how Ali had suddenly gone from having no plans for the afternoon to having to leave right away. He was trying to guess who’d just called him. He even thought, for a fleeting instant, about checking the call log on Ali’s phone to find out who’d called. At which point good sense intervened (and embarrassment, at even having the idea), and he wiped his hands clean and yanked on his clothes and beat a hasty retreat, calling a goodbye through the bathroom door on his way out of the room.

“Jimmy?”

Ali’s voice brings Jimmy back to the present. Jimmy realises he’s staring at the grey carpet; isn’t sure how long he’s been doing that.

“Darts aren’t going to throw themselves,” the other man says, and his tone is teasing but his smile’s puzzled.

Jimmy exhales. “Right, yeah.”

His first throw’s a five. The second’s an eleven (close to the triple, but not close enough). The third bounces off the metal between twenty and five and hits the floor with a sad little thud.

Jimmy rubs his wrist across his forehead and glares at the dartboard, while Ali hides his laughter (badly) behind a cough, and claps him on the shoulder.

“Never mind,” the other man says, brightly, as Jimmy heads for the door to retrieve his darts. “Best of five?”

Jimmy, bending down for the recalcitrant dart, is stirred to protest. “ _Hang_ on. You haven’t won _this_ round, yet.”

“No, but I’m about to. And I already won the last one.”

Jimmy turns back, folds his arms. “Sure you’re cheating somehow.”

Ali shakes his head, all innocence. “You’re just out of practice.”

“Well,” Jimmy says, “whose fault is _that_?”

Ali’s grin is extremely unhelpful. “Felt pretty mutual, from my end.”

Jimmy grunts. He really _does_ want to play darts. No matter how gropeable Ali is looking right now, Jimmy’s going to be strong. Mostly because he’s about to go two-nil down and there’s no way – no way _on earth_ – he’s letting that stand.

He steps aside, though not very far; the room’s narrow here, most of the space near the door is taken up with the bathroom, leaving an interior corridor that’s perhaps three feet wide. “Go on,” he says. “Put me out of my misery. Then it’s time for revenge.”

(There’s _pride_ at stake, now.)

Ali snorts. “Right. Now _that_ , I can’t wait to see.” He makes his first throw with ease.

Jimmy shifts, subtly, to take up more of the three feet of space. “Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

“Yep.” Ali spends a little longer lining up his second throw, but it also flies home without a problem, leaving him needing a double twelve to finish. “Face it,” he says, flashing another grin. “Even best-of-five isn’t going to save you.”

“Really.” Jimmy strolls back to join Ali behind the spare trainer they’ve been using to mark out the oche. He gets up close behind the other man, leans in and says, quietly, “We’ll see.”

“Bring it,” says Ali, not looking away from the board. The tip of his tongue’s poking out between his lips as he steadies his arm for the final throw.

And, well, Ali did more or less just invite Jimmy to play dirty. So he leans in again and blows gently on the back of the other man’s neck.

Doesn’t help. Doesn’t help one fucking bit. The dart sails through the air like it’s on a string, thunks into green-painted fibre. Ali turns, arms raised, mouth open in a silent, mocking mime of a cheer, shaking celebratory fists in Jimmy’s face.

Jimmy rolls his eyes and grabs a handful of Ali’s grey t-shirt, yanking him in for a snog.

“Mmm,” says Ali, a while later. His chest is rising and falling against Jimmy’s; his arms are draped around Jimmy’s neck. His face is half an inch away and he has yet to look up from Jimmy’s lips. “Victory kiss.”

“Shut-you-up kiss, more like.”

“Funny… It _tasted_ like victory, to me.”

Ali’s room is dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows that more or less fill the wall opposite the door. Lightweight net curtains cut out some of the glare of the afternoon sun, but there’s still enough of a glow through them to light up Ali’s face, bringing out the bronze of his skin.

Jimmy lets his hands slide down from Ali’s waist to his backside. “ _Temporary_ victory. Short-lived victory. Soon-to-be- _crushed_ victory.” On _crushed_ , he gives the other man’s arse a firm squeeze.

After which there is, of course, more kissing.

“You wish,” says Ali, the moment they come up for air. “I’m on fire today, admit it.”

Jimmy glances at the arms either side of his neck, and just about resists the urge to say, _Hot, definitely_. He goes for deadpan, instead. “You were all right in that last round, I guess.”

That gets a splutter from Ali. “ _All right_ , he says. I was, like, three hundred ahead of you.”

Jimmy shrugs, enjoying the weight of Ali’s arms on him. “Things can change. I’ll get you in the next one.”

“Sure you don’t want to surrender? Bow down before my unassailable lead?”

“There’s only one person going to be doing any surrendering in this room.” Jimmy drums his fingers against Ali’s arse.

Ali bites his lip, then clears his throat. “Honestly think you can beat me?”

Jimmy exercises, frankly, super-human restraint – lip-biting, come on, that isn’t even _slightly_ fair – and just smirks. “I _know_ I can.”

“Then let’s play.”

And Jimmy was _going_ to play (he _was_ ), but a sudden knock at the door – a sharp, insistent rap – interrupts them. They sigh in union, grin at that, then hastily inspect each other for any obvious signs of what they’ve just been doing: Ali straightens Jimmy’s shirt, Jimmy does his best to smooth Ali’s springy hair.

“Did you _actually_ mess it up,” says the other man, watching Jimmy through narrowed eyes, “or are you just using the excuse to interfere?”

Jimmy sniffs, and stops what he’s doing. “Lost cause anyway,” he says. “Right, go on.” He gives Ali a playful slap on the arse, mostly because he can.

Ali turns, and takes a single stride towards the door before stopping, briefly, to fiddle with the crotch of his jeans, throwing a grin back over his shoulder at Jimmy as he does.

(Jimmy, for his part, hopes with uncharitable fervour that it isn’t Joe at the door; he saw enough of the lad drooling all over Ali at training this morning.)

Instead, it’s someone who wasn’t at training, someone who was _missed_ at training: Broady the invalid, fresh from having his broken nose fixed and with his human giraffe sidekick hovering behind him, all smiles.

When Jimmy catches Broady’s eye – and it’s a watery eye, framed by purple bruising – the other man says, with a smirk, “Ah, Jimmy. Fancy seeing you here. Here in Cooky’s—”

“ _Fuck_!” exclaims Jimmy, clutching at his chest and staggering. “What _is_ it? A zombie? Cooky, shut the door, quick, before it tries to _eat_ us.”

“Ha,” says Broady, loudly and distinctly, “ha.” He moves inside the room and plants both hands on his hips, forming the double teapot of _you’re in trouble now_.

Jimmy steps past Ali, going in for a proper look. Broady’s nose is encased in bandages and tape; he’s ghostly pale, and his mouth’s set in a thin line of what might be disapproval, but could also be pain. Jimmy suppresses a grimace of sympathy as he remembers the wave of alarm that went through the dressing room, remembers rushing out to the balcony to see Stu crouching, surrounded by worried Indian fielders.

Jimmy knows he didn’t see the moment itself – the impact of the ball – but somehow it feels like he did. The TV replays he watched that night (alone in the living room at home, coughing and feverish and unable to sleep, his family all upstairs in their beds) have merged with his own memories. His recall of that day now features the ball flying off a top edge and blood dripping out of Broady’s helmet, and he wishes with all his heart that it didn’t.

“You look terrible,” Jimmy says, at last, raising his eyebrows.

Broady’s mouth quirks. “Cheers. Bud.”

Jimmy pulls the other man in for a fierce hug. “Got to focus on the important things.”

“Knew I could rely on you.” Broady’s arms settle around Jimmy’s shoulders.

Jimmy closes his eyes, and mutters, as quietly as he can because this is for no-one’s ears but Stu’s, “No more hitting balls with your face, yeah?”

“Do my best.”

When he steps away, Jimmy feels something at the small of his back – Ali’s hand, resting there, lightly – and he half-turns his head before he remembers he can’t afford to draw attention to the contact, and looks down at the floor, instead. Normally he’d move away, especially in public, but (this once) he lets himself soak up the warmth of the other man’s touch.

“You’re just in time,” Ali’s saying, to the other two, “to join us for the next game.”

Taking this as his cue, Jimmy holds up his darts.

Broady raises an eyebrow. “Oh… you’re playing?”

Ali’s hand disappears from Jimmy’s back. “If you count what Jimmy’s been doing as _playing_ , yeah.”

Finny laughs. Jimmy gives Ali a look. “I was just letting you get a head start.”

“Sounds,” says Broady, “like Cooky’s team is the place to be, then.” He crosses over to stand on the far side of Ali, arms folded. Ali’s nodding, chin raised, beaming.

Jimmy pouts, until Finny comes over and throws an arm round his shoulders. “Don’t worry, Jimmy,” he says. “I’m always on your side.”

“You and me,” Jimmy says, reaching up to pat the other man’s hand. “You and me. We’re taking them down.”

They don’t, of course. They get closer than Jimmy did in the previous round, but not close enough. Ali really is on a roll today. When the game’s over, the combined force of smug Broady and smug Ali – especially when Jimmy isn’t in a position to _do_ anything about the latter – is too much, so Jimmy retreats to make some tea while they both get it out of their systems.

(In truth, his grumpiness over the whole thing is partly feigned, in the interests of keeping up appearances. He can’t begrudge Ali his grin, not after the past six months or so.)

The kettle filled and roaring into life, Jimmy looks around for what else he needs. The layout of Ali’s room is much like his own – a pair of silver grey armchairs by the big window, double bed festooned with needless cushions, and a substantial desk opposite the bed, with attached mini-fridge and flat-screen TV – except that it has all the touches that speak of the other man. Nestled on one armchair is a small extra cushion, product of Ali’s one and only attempt at sewing in school, pale blue with crooked letters picked out in faded yellow thread (his name, or what remains of it: A-L-S-A-R). Neatly lined up at the side of the wardrobe are two rows of trainers, including the battered, age-darkened pair Ali hasn’t worn (as far as Jimmy remembers) since early 2007, but always carries with him anyway. By the bed is the book about English forests that Swanny bought Ali for Christmas three years ago, its spine so creased from reading and re-reading you can no longer make out the title, bookmark somewhere around page two hundred, as it has been (Jimmy isn’t sure how he knows this, only that he does) since mid-December of last year.

Perhaps the most obvious sign this is Ali’s room, though, is an absence: his clothes are nowhere to be seen, sequestered away behind wardrobe doors and in drawers; there’s no untidy paperwork and no dirty kit, there are no stray gadgets or spare razors or phone chargers destined to be forgotten down the wrong side of the bed. Ali’s only going to be here for, what, a week? And yet he unpacks like he’s staying for a month.

(Okay, Jimmy probably wouldn’t unpack like this even if he _were_ staying for a month.)

Jimmy finds the mugs easily enough, including Ali’s favourite, the shiny, chipped red one that travels with him. He arranges them on the desk by the TV, spotting, as he does that, a pair of photographs stationed there, in a hinged metal diptych frame. One photo is of a tree, some scraggly-looking thing on a hillside; the other shows what Jimmy assumes is Ali’s daughter, fast asleep, cradled in slender arms that must belong to Alice (although the camera has a lens only for the baby).

Jimmy looks away from the photo frame, quickly, but can’t stop himself from wondering if it used to sit beside Ali’s bed. Jimmy has one of his own, of his wife and his daughters in a park together, laughing in the sunshine. At some point during the second Test, Jimmy found he couldn’t quite look at it anymore, and shifted it quietly across the room. Now it lives on windowsills, or in his bathroom; facing away from the bed.

He opens the fridge for milk, then searches out the tea canister: metal, a dark rose in colour, heavily dented. Of everything here, this has been with Ali the longest; Jimmy remembers it from the other man’s very first tour, when they’d travelled together from the West Indies to join the team in India and Jimmy found himself spending more and more time in the younger man’s room, enjoying his company and his tea. He realises, as he picks it up and pushes open the familiar lid, that he hasn’t seen it in a while; has Ali not been bringing it with him, or can it really be that this is the first time he’s made a brew on Ali’s turf since… when?

“You’re quite at home in Cooky’s room.”

Broady’s voice makes Jimmy jump. He scowls a bit.

“You know Cooky; creature of habit.” Jimmy concentrates on getting the right amount of sugar in each mug. “You always know where he’s going to put stuff.”

“Yeah, but—” Out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy sees Broady wave his hands. “I mean, you just… got on with it. No asking—”

Jimmy grunts, to forestall him. He spreads his own hands the length of the desk, taking in the four mugs with his gesture. “You want to make your own brew?”

Jimmy holds Broady’s gaze until the other man smiles, shrugs, and looks away. He’s clearly itching to say more, but Jimmy gives him no excuse, pouring the water quickly and taking Ali’s tea straight over to him. Their exchanged glances, now, have more in them than just wry flirtation; for the first time, Jimmy shares at least a little of Ali’s wariness.

He relaxes again during the next round, though. Not least when Broady makes a triple twenty (complete fluke, obviously), celebrates like he’s taken a wicket, and promptly gets a huge hug from Finny.

“Oi.” Jimmy grabs Finny by the belt, yanking him away. “Remember whose team you’re on.”

“Sorry,” says Finny, sheepish as he slopes back to Jimmy’s side. Ali’s turned away, but Jimmy can see his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

Jimmy reaches for his tea, and almost smiles.

\--

When Ali closes the door behind the other two, later, he turns round and leans against it, hands tucked behind his back. For a long moment, he and Jimmy just look at each other, smiling.

“ _Sure_ you don’t want to come out for dinner with us?” says Jimmy, at last.

Ali sighs, shakes his head. “I do _want_ to.” He pauses. “Well, mostly. Bit stressful last time. But I can’t, honestly.”

“You had a dutiful dinner _last_ night.”

Ali pushes himself away from the door. His smile’s different now; more guarded, somehow brisk. “This isn’t duty. Not really. It’s just a thing I do. Making sure I spend time with _everyone_ on the team.”

Jimmy gives up; he knows a battle he’s not winning when he sees it, and he doesn’t want to seem clingy. He pushes his hands into his pockets. “Fun, today,” he says, instead.

Ali nods, taking a couple of unhurried steps towards him. “Enjoyed beating you.”

Jimmy reaches out, hooks an arm around Ali’s waist. “Rematch tomorrow?”

Ali grins. “Definitely.”

“It’s…” Jimmy swallows, moving in closer, turning his face away; he’s already regretting starting this sentence. “Good. Seeing you enjoy yourself.”

Ali goes still against him, briefly; Jimmy will remember this, later, when he waits for Ali to ask him to stay the night (when he’s prepared to say yes), but gets only a lingering goodnight kiss and a cheerful push towards the door.

“Usual time?” is all Ali says, now, and Jimmy kisses his temple.

“Yeah.” Still keeping one hand in his pocket, Jimmy tightens the grip of his other arm around Ali’s back. He drags the backs of his fingernails up and down Ali’s side, as he thinks. “Like I said yesterday, think it’s time for a reminder of who’s in charge.”

Ali moulds himself to Jimmy; nuzzles the side of his neck. “As if I could forget.”

“Smartarse replies are out, for a start.”

A hitch in Ali’s breath; a smile against Jimmy’s skin. “Does this mean… you know, spanking? You did promise, ages ago.”

Jimmy considers this. Distrusts his own desire for it, feeling now-familiar nerves in the pit of his belly. “Tomorrow,” he says, low in Ali’s ear. “If you’re good, tonight.”

“Tomorrow. Really.” Ali’s chuckle is filthy; it goes straight to Jimmy’s gut, planting an ember of heat there. “The night before the Test?”

Jimmy seizes on this potential way out, shooting for a casual tone but probably missing. “If you’d rather not…”

Ali cuts in, quickly. “Did I say that?”

“Well, then.” Jimmy knows he can only dodge this for so long; and the more his mind wanders down this track, the harder it is to pretend to himself he doesn’t like the images, for all his doubts. “If you’re bending over a bit gingerly in the slips the next day… well, only you and me need to know why.”

Ali clears his throat, and there’s excitement in his voice as he stumbles through his next words. “Okay. Well. Got to be good tonight. Right. See you later, then.”

“Later,” says Jimmy, as lightly as he can – though it’s an effort to prise himself away, when all he really wants to do is peel Ali’s clothes off him, piece by piece.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A version of the first scene was originally posted to tumblr in response to a [kiss meme prompt](http://kutubiyya.tumblr.com/tagged/kiss-meme).
> 
> [Here's the scorecard](http://www.ecb.co.uk/scorecard/36739) for the Durham vs Nottinghamshire One-Day Cup match. I don't think it was actually on TV. Also, it seems that Ben Stokes not only scored a century in this match, but then travelled down to London to join England for training the next day!
> 
> I've collected [some photos from the 13th August training session here](http://kutubiyya.tumblr.com/post/138721517822/england-vs-india-2014-5th-test-the-oval), plus one of Broady from the session on the 14th. Broady _was_ actually there on the 13th, as well, but shhh... artistic licence (I wanted the Jimmy/Broady moment to happen in a more private space).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enormous thanks twistsofsilver/twowittoowhoo for talking this chapter over with me. It's fair to say I've been a touch nervous about it.

The night before the Test begins, Alastair’s sitting on his bed, legs stretched out in front of him, Jimmy’s laptop on the rumpled sheet between his knees. Jimmy’s a warm weight at his back as Alastair pores over the iTunes store; the other man’s leaning into him, chin on Alastair’s shoulder, legs either side of him.

And there are increasingly wandering hands on Alastair’s thighs. He’s wearing tracksuit bottoms, tonight, rather than jeans, and the difference – when it comes to what he can feel through the fabric – is significant.

“Stop that,” Alastair mutters, trying and failing not to smile. “Can’t concentrate.”

They’ve agreed that music is probably in order tonight. He’s choosing tracks to download to Jimmy’s mp3 player, to fill some gaps in Jimmy’s collection. He wants things without lyrics, things that go on for twenty minutes, things that will muffle anything they happen to get up to.

The specific thing they’re planning to get up to.

“Concentration’s overrated.” Teeth at his earlobe. “Just pick something random. Jazz, classical… they’re all the same, right?”

That does it, Alastair decides; a musical boobytrap is in order. He swiftly adds ‘Zadok the Priest’ to his list, hiding a grin as he pictures Jimmy’s reaction when the _forte tutti_ kicks in. “Concentration’s my stock-in-trade.”

“And distraction’s mine.” The wandering hands wander higher. One of them ducks under Alastair’s t-shirt.

Alastair huffs a laugh. “What a pair we make,” he murmurs, absently, as he continues to scroll past icon after icon. Jimmy’s hand is cool, but the touch is welcome. “Unstoppable force, immoveable object.”

“Dunno,” says Jimmy. “Reckon you’re pretty moveable.”

The caress across Alastair’s belly and up his side begins to skirt the edges of tickling. Alastair tries not to squirm; it’ll only encourage the man. Then he startles at something else entirely: a glancing touch of cold against his ankle. Jimmy’s bare feet, it turns out, are insinuating themselves under his own.

He twists round to frown at him.

“Thought you might want to warm them up,” says the other man, without a trace of shame.

“I don’t understand,” says Alastair, “how you get so cold so quickly.” But he draws his legs up, a little, so he can get his feet over Jimmy’s.

“You’ve got your air-conditioning turned up to Arctic, that’s how. Also…” –Jimmy makes a show of fluttering his eyelashes— “I’m delicate. I’ve got a delicate constitution. Refined.”

Alastair snorts. He twists round further, enough so he can slide an arm around Jimmy’s back. “I’m going to ring Glen Chapple and tell him you’ve gone soft. He needs to take you back up north for a bit. Toughen you up.”

“But then who’ll bowl for you? I’m the most skilful bowler in the world, remember.”

A part of Alastair wishes he hadn’t said that, in the press conference today; it’s the third time this evening, at least, that Jimmy’s teased him about it. “Sure someone’ll pick up the slack.” Alastair remembers yesterday, the dressing room; that strange, inexplicably territorial, rather hot kiss. Loads his tone with teasing innuendo. “You know, if I ask them _nicely_ enough.”

Right on cue, Jimmy’s hands tighten on him. “Don’t you dare. I’m staying right here. Make sure the rest of them keep their paws off you.”

Alastair marks that little experiment down as a success. “But what about your delicate constitution?”

“I’ll cope,” says Jimmy. He gives a big, sad sigh. “Somehow…”

Alastair laughs. “Fast bowlers, honestly. They warned me, you know. When I was but a lad, at opening batsman school.” He plants a quick kiss on the tip of Jimmy’s nose. “Watch out for seamers, they said. Bunch of divas, they said.” Now one on the lips. “High maintenance, highly-strung—”

This time he does get tickled.

“You were asking for that,” says Jimmy, as Alastair squirms and yelps and can’t escape.

“Guess I was,” Alastair says, breathlessly.

“There’s only one highly-strung seamer in this squad, and it isn’t me.”

Alastair decides there’s no good way to respond to that, so he sidles past it. “I’ll wrap you in cotton wool,” he says. “How about that? Or put you in a glass case, like in a museum, just take you out for the new ball.”

Jimmy looks up at the ceiling, as if he’s pondering this. “In my whites?”

“I was thinking naked, actually. But, like, tastefully posed, you know— Ooh, or… how about some cotton wool undies?”

Before he’s drawn another breath, Alastair’s on his back, pinned under a grinning Jimmy.

“Think it’s time you started behaving yourself.”

“But this is _fun_.”

“Mocking me isn’t the way to get what you want.”

There’s something in Jimmy’s voice; or maybe it’s what isn’t there. Conviction.

Alastair studies Jimmy’s face until the other man looks away. “What’s up?” When Jimmy just shakes his head, Alastair says, “No, there’s something wrong.”

“I’m fine.”

“Remember how you told me once that fine means not fine? Well.”

Hint of a rueful smile. “Can’t believe I told you that.”

Alastair thinks for a moment; puts a few things together, for the first time. “You’ve been avoiding this. The, you know… the spanking. God, that’s a ridiculous word. But anyway. You’ve been—”

“I haven’t.”

“You _have_.” Alastair can see it now. “Do you not want to— Is it… is this a boundary for you?”

“It’s…”

“Because we agreed. To agree. If _you_ don’t want to do it, _I_ don’t want to do it.”

“I _do._ I do want to.” A long pause. “But I’m worried.”

Alastair wishes he could touch Jimmy’s face; caress it, bring it round to meet his gaze. But something about the idea feels like a step too far, like it wouldn’t be _keeping things simple_ – and he can’t reach, anyway, what with being pinned to the mattress and all. He works a hand free enough to touch the other man’s arm, and rest it there.

“What’re you worried about?”

Still Jimmy is looking away. “About wanting to… It’s something that’s going to hurt you. I’ve told you before, I’ve got experience at— Force. Aggression. I’ve seen where it goes. What if I get carried away? What if I _actually_ hurt you?”

“Hey,” says Alastair, softly. He’s stroking Jimmy’s arm, now; stops himself. “I’ll tell you. If it hurts. In a way I don’t want. I’ll tell you.”

Jimmy finally looks at Alastair again, and there’s such uncertainty in his eyes that Alastair’s throat tightens. He wriggles to free an arm, pulls Jimmy in to him.

“I trust you,” he says. “And you can trust me.”

Jimmy grunts. Alastair lets him go, quickly, afraid of making him uncomfortable.

The other man rolls onto his side, propping his head up on an elbow, resting his other arm across Alastair’s chest. He still looks wary.

“Look.” Alastair takes his time, searching for the words. “I… I spend so much of my time having to be strong. Making decisions that affect everyone. Finding ways to explain, when things go wrong. Hiding everything, bottling it up. So having this… It’s been important, this summer. It means—” Can he say that? _It means a lot to me_? No, probably not. “Knowing that there’s a little part of the day when I can just… stop. Be told what to do. React. Relax. Or, you know…” He smiles, wryly. “Get frustrated because you’re making me wait. But either way, you take the lead. You take responsibility. And… I’ve told you this before. You take that seriously. It’s obvious you do. You care. I wouldn’t _be_ here, otherwise.”

Jimmy’s quiet for a long time, gaze and fingertips absorbed in tracing the outline of the breast pocket on Alastair’s polo shirt. Alastair wills himself to patience, tries not to worry he’s said too much.

“Okay,” Jimmy says, eventually, and Alastair feels a little jolt in his belly, because the tone’s different now; it’s arch, it’s considering, it’s in charge. “So. Tell me what you want.”

Alastair decides it’s time to take a leaf out of Jimmy’s book, and go for concise. He stretches his arms up above his head. “I want to feel it tomorrow. The details are up to you.”

Jimmy draws in a long breath through his nose. “Usual rules,” he says. “Say _stop_ or _no_ if you need a break.”

The other man’s half-smiling as he leans down; his fingertips dance up Alastair’s side as he brushes his lips over Alastair’s jaw. There are a couple of feints – teasing false starts – but Alastair knows by now not to snatch for the kiss, and eventually it comes, slow and deep. Soon there’s a hand up inside his shirt and another pushing its way into his hair: tilting his head back, exposing his throat. Alastair groans; half arousal, half anticipation. Stubble grazes his skin; a warm mouth seeks out his pulse point. A while later, he feels his thighs being eased apart, Jimmy’s knee opening him up, and his breath hitches.

“I could listen to you all day,” Jimmy murmurs, against Alastair’s lips. “All the little noises you make.”

 _Then don’t stop_ , Alastair thinks, but what he says is, “Then maybe it’s time for music?”

“I’d have to move. Or let you move.”

Then Jimmy’s mouth is back over his, and Alastair’s arching up into the palm stroking over the curve of his belly, up to his ribcage. There’s a pinch at his nipple, and he grunts into the kiss; but it isn’t brief like Jimmy’s usual pinches, it goes on and gets, if anything, sharper. Heat gathers in Alastair’s gut and his groin. He moans, but it’s muffled by the kiss, and when he writhes – unsure even in his own mind whether he wants to dislodge the grip, or move into it – he finds himself checked, by Jimmy’s leg hooked around his and the fingers still twisted in his hair.

When Jimmy finally releases him, mouth and nipple both, the abrupt relief makes Alastair gasp. His nipple is warm, tingling; extra-sensitive to the fabric dragging over it.

“Still up for this?” says Jimmy, softly.

At the moment, Alastair can only nod.

“Don’t move.” Jimmy brushes a kiss over his chin. “I’ll sort out the music.”

For a minute or two, Alastair concentrates on calming his breathing, gazing up at the ceiling, only half-listening to Jimmy tapping at the laptop keyboard. Then he props himself up on his elbows, so he can drink in the sight of the smooth, lean lines of the other man, as Jimmy disconnects his mp3 player, moves it and the laptop onto the desk, and switches on a small portable speaker unit.

“Pretty sure,” says Jimmy, as he turns back to the bed, the opening bars of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ trickling from tiny but effective speakers, “I told you not to move.”

“I wanted to look at you.” Alastair lowers himself back down. “You really need to give me some warning when something’s an order, you know.”

“True.” Jimmy stands over him for a moment. Then he grins. “But it’ll do,” he says, moving away again. “As an excuse.”

This time Alastair doesn’t watch him go. “It’s not an excuse, it’s the _truth—”_

“I meant for me.” Jimmy comes back into view, and there’s a white cloth in his hand.

A handkerchief, Alastair realises. He swallows. “Oh.”

The mattress dips; Jimmy kneels astride Alastair’s hips, smiling his in-charge smile as he folds the handkerchief. “You did say the details are up to me.”

Alastair huffs a laugh, but his breathing is quickening again. “I did.”

Jimmy nods at him. “Shirt off, first.”

Alastair obeys, stretching carefully as he does, winning himself a broader smile. Then Jimmy’s leaning forward and Alastair’s closing his eyes and darkness is settling in. And even as he’s quietly enjoying how snug the blindfold is against his skin – and the extra reminder that it’s there, as his eyelids try to blink, and can’t – there’s a small part of him that notices, not for the first time, how gentle Jimmy’s fingers are when they fix it in place. This relaxes him as much as the tone of casual command with which the other man says, “Lie back.”

He’s disorientated enough that even that is easier said than done; it’s tricky to judge how far away the mattress is, behind him. It takes time, as it did the last time Jimmy blindfolded him, to let go of the assumption of sight: to stop trying to look, even though he knows he can’t see, knows his head is moving fruitlessly.

Gradually, though, he reaches a stage where everything is about sensation; about tracking Jimmy’s movements, and his own arousal, through what his skin knows. Teasing tickle of breath, soft brush of lips, moist swirl of tongue; fingertips and nails and teeth and palms. Alastair gasps, and shifts, and stops trying to guess what’s coming next, or where. With the removal of his sight, the world has closed in around him. The music helps; the shuffle throws up some Duke Ellington, next, rich and sensuous. Music to get lost in.

All is playful, until Jimmy finally starts to slide down the waistband of Alastair’s trousers. Then the other man takes his time with the skin just above Alastair’s left hip, sucking and nipping, pressing in harder and harder with his teeth until Alastair can’t lie still anymore, until he lets out his breath in a loud gasp. Then there’s pressure over the straining fabric at his groin, and Alastair bucks, a little, before he can rein himself in.

“Gets you so hard. This. Doesn’t it?”

Alastair isn’t really in a talking frame of mind, but he knows Jimmy likes it, and – more to the point – it soon becomes apparent that the other man’s withholding further attention until he answers.

So: “Yes…”

Alastair could swear Jimmy’s fondling hand feels smug. His voice certainly is – because of _course_ he’s not done, trust the man to get chatty at a time like this.

“Why?”

Alastair suppresses a sigh, and does his best to put it into words. “Out there, I’m battling against my body. In here…” _In here_ , he thinks, giving himself a moment to soak in the music once more, notes of the alto sax curling around him like he can see them; _in here, my body’s an instrument that you play_. He almost says that aloud, but has just enough presence of mind left to bite his lip on it. Too flowery. Too much. “In here, I can just… let it have what it wants.”

“And what it wants is to be toyed with.” Jimmy’s pulling off the tracksuit bottoms now, at last, and then the pants. “Helpless.”

Alastair catches his breath as he feels his cock spring free. He lets his head loll back, smiling at the air. “It does tonight. I do tonight.”

“Roll over.”

Jimmy helps him with this; he has to. Co-ordinating limbs is more than a little challenging, in a blindfold with muscles melted into languor. He ends up on his elbows and knees, leaning heavily on the softness of what must be pillows piled under his chest.

Jimmy’s stroking his back. “You okay?”

“More than okay.”

“Maybe I should take the blindfold off, at least.”

“No.” Alastair feels safe. Cocooned, somehow. And tingling with anticipation. “All good.”

The stroking has moved to his backside, now; another hand is braced against his back. “Skin here’s so pale,” says Jimmy. “Such a contrast to the rest of you.”

And that’s all the warning he gives.

A hollow thwack; Alastair feels the sting an instant later. It’s mild, though. So’s the next. When the third proves firmer, but still disappointing, he clears his throat.

“That all you got?”

Silence. Then there’s a line being scored, slowly, across sensitised skin. A fingernail, perhaps; hard to tell. Something with an edge. And okay, perhaps the opening blows have had more effect than Alastair first thought.

“Don’t forget,” says Jimmy, “this is meant to be a reward for _good_ behaviour.”

The fingernail, or whatever it is, presses in harder. Alastair tenses, involuntarily. “Sorry. But… a _bit_ harder.” Trump card: “Please?”

“Count them for me,” Jimmy says. “We’ll start with five.”

Alastair bites his tongue on _Five? Really?_ because he doesn’t want to give Jimmy any reason to stop.

This time, the impact is considerably harder; Alastair catches his breath. The sharp twinge of pain is gone almost as abruptly as it lands, but it leaves an echo behind.

Again the fingernail, cutting across where the blow landed. “I said, _count,”_ says Jimmy.

Alastair gathers his scattered thoughts. “One.”

The next is on the other cheek, the left: a sting, fading quickly to an ache. He’s swifter, this time, to do as he’s been told.

“Two.”

Same spot as the previous one. It smarts, but it’s manageable.

“Three.”

And again. He holds back a grunt. Even after the sting is gone, discomfort lingers as a dull throb.

“Four.”

For the final blow, some respite: back across to the right cheek. The sound’s loud, a crack that dances in his ears.

“Five.”

His breath is loud, ragged. The skin of his backside feels hot and tight, like sunburn; everything is tingling with the rush of blood.

“More,” he says, hoarsely. His cock’s so hard, it’s aching; the tip’s brushing up against his belly.

“What do you say?”

Alastair can’t place the source of Jimmy’s voice; he tries to look round before he remembers he can’t. “Please?”

A disapproving click of the tongue. “Before that. I gave you something you want. Manners, brat.”

It takes a moment, but when the answer comes to him, Alastair almost trips over his tongue in his eagerness to say it. “Th— thank you.”

“Better.” Unseen, unseeable fingertips stroke Alastair’s backside, finding all the warm places, the tender places; the smarting places. “So. Want some more?”

“Yes.” Alastair’s skin is alert to everything: every fold of cotton where his knees are braced against creased sheets, every brush of a hand at his back, every whisper of friction as he shifts chest and arms against the pillows; every breath of movement in the air. (That last one might be his imagination. His mind is starting to drift.) Most of all, he’s alive to Jimmy’s touch: to the strange soft abrasion of callused but gentle fingers over abused skin. He squirms, and he doesn’t know where the pain ends and the need begins, anymore. “Please.”

“Another five. Keep counting.”

No time to acknowledge that. The next blow lands hard, before he’s ready; dead centre, just below the base of his spine. He jerks, gasping, from shock and a fresh jolt of arousal.

“Si— Six.”

The next is low, more like the top of his thigh. A burst of pain splashes across his skin like scalding water. He presses his lips together: wanting to moan, wanting to wriggle, but also wanting to be still, to wait this out, to test himself.

“Seven.”

Pain, and a growing high. It’s like the buzz he gets from an intense training session, or a really tough run. He’s heard countless trainers and physios explain it over the years: enough exertion, real exertion, and your body compensates with endorphins to damp down the pain. If you push hard enough, it overcompensates, and then you’re floating.

This is what he’s been waiting for.

The next blow is on the same spot. This time it stings so much it feels like his skin is raw. He lets Jimmy have a grunt, but no more. He curls his toes, bunches his hands into fists against the sheets beyond his head.

“Eight.”

Top of the other thigh, pain blooms, _fuck_ – the swearword escapes him before he can stop himself, sheer surprise, because how can that hurt _more,_ it’s the first time that patch of skin has any attention.

“N— nine.”

The last is back to the place where Jimmy started. The sting isn’t mild any more. Alastair’s skin is fire, but his limbs are water. It takes him a couple of tries to get the word out.

 _“…Ten.”_ He takes a deep breath. “Thank you. More?”

Jimmy’s voice seems to come from far away. “No. Think that’ll do for tonight.”

Some tugging at the back of his head, on the blindfold, which falls away; Alastair flinches, expecting brightness, but Jimmy’s hands are cupping his face, shielding him.

He blinks, focusing on Jimmy’s face with an effort; doesn’t know when the other man moved round in front of him. “Come _on.”_ The words don’t come out quite as clearly as he imagined they would, but he tries anyway. “I’m fine.”

Jimmy shrugs. “Purely selfish decision.” He leans in, offers a firm, close-mouthed kiss. “Need to keep you in good shape so I can fuck you. Assuming you want that…?”

“God, yes.” Alastair desperately wants a proper kiss, but Jimmy’s face is hovering just out of reach and he can’t quite co-ordinate raising a hand to grab the other man’s neck. He hears himself whine, a bit. “If you leave me dangling, I’m demoting you to first change, tomorrow.”

Jimmy laughs, briefly, then sobers again. “Sure you’re okay for sex? Not too sore?”

Finally, a kiss. Alastair meets it, hungrily.

“I’m not made of glass,” he says, quietly but firmly, when they’re done.

\--

_It’s not only glass that’s breakable._

Not a thing Jimmy’s going to say out loud. Ali would bite his head off.

But this is an area – Jimmy tells himself, instead, as he sets about preparing Ali as quickly and carefully as he can – in which he _doesn’t_ trust the other man. Ali knows his limits, but he’ll sail right past them, given half a chance. In his cricket, he’s always striven for more: faster, further, better, practicing over and over and over again, to hone himself into the opener, the slip catcher, the player of spin, the captain that he wants to be. Exhausting himself, isolating himself, hurting himself.

This is not going to happen here, not while Jimmy has control of things.

He knows Ali has a high threshold for pain; knows from his own experience that arousal can – at least for a while – dull it. Even so, Jimmy’s been keeping himself on the tightest of leashes, vigilant for any hint that he might have overstepped. He made Ali count aloud not for the power trip (although that was, well… okay, too), but so he could be sure the other man was still with him; listen out for strain in Ali’s voice that he wouldn’t admit to in words.

For all Jimmy’s misgivings, though – and they haven’t been banished by a single evening of moans and plinky-plonky music – this has worked for him. The twitching, the squirming, the gasps; Ali naked and blindfolded, crouching on all fours, soaking up everything Jimmy has given him and asking for more. The bare arse presented for him, its round, white expanse innocent of the sun but festooned, now, with the livid marks his right hand has created there. Jimmy’s control is written across Ali’s skin, and even though it won’t last – some of the marks are already blurring, their edges less crisp than they initially were, as the heat from the rough treatment spreads and the skin turns mottled, blotchy, like it’s embarrassed – it makes his pulse race and his cock throb just to look at it.

He strokes those marks, contemplatively; firmly, enough to make the flesh turn briefly white again under his fingertips, before he moves on, leaving the blood to rush back. There’s a muffled groan from the mound of pillows he built for Ali.

“Ready?” Jimmy says, and repeats it until he gets a raised head and a clear _Yes,_ rather than just a grunt. Then he prepares himself, with some haste, and does what he’s been waiting for all evening: he lines up and pushes himself bit by bit inside Ali, who groans again, louder.

Jimmy’s head is swimming and his heartbeat’s stuttering and he’s remembering all over again how good this feels, how utterly fucking _fantastic._ Sometimes it still catches him off guard, sometimes he still wants to stop, and take it all in: _This is happening_. He settles one hand at Ali’s hip, makes a fist with the other around Ali’s cock, and for a while he (almost) loses himself, watching his shaft slide slowly in and out of Ali’s tight hole, past the swollen, reddened skin of the marks he’s made. The sight’s so intoxicating, so lewd, he knows he isn’t going to last long. And he’s not alone: Ali’s fucking forward into Jimmy’s hand as Jimmy’s thrusting into him from behind. It’s not the most co-ordinated rhythm they’ve ever managed but it doesn’t matter.

(Ali’s panting Jimmy’s name, between moans, and Jimmy knows he should stop him, that even with the music – strings, now, and quite loud – there’s a risk someone might hear, but he doesn’t; he wants to hear his name in that mouth, in that wrecked voice.)

Afterwards – after he’s arched and shuddered and groaned in the heat of his orgasm – he decides it’s this last thing, more than anything else, that shows how close he’s taken Ali to the edge, tonight. He stays close to feel the other man’s climax, the tension in his back and the muscles clenching at Jimmy, inside.

Then Ali’s motionless, slumped over the pillows. When Jimmy leans forward to touch Ali’s face, the other man’s eyelids flicker but don’t open. A faint smile creeps across his face, though.

Jimmy clears his throat. “Back in a minute.”

He eases out, carefully – Ali exhales in a hiss, even so – and makes his way to the bathroom. Cleans himself up, gets rid of the condom, gulps down some water, and returns with a brimming glass for Ali. Ali’s still not moving, so Jimmy manoeuvres the other man onto his side (spilling some of the water in the process; maybe he should’ve put the glass down first) then insinuates an arm under Ali’s head, propping him against his shoulder and tilting the glass to parted lips.

Ali takes only little sips, at first, but soon he’s drinking faster than Jimmy can tip the glass. When he’s done, when Jimmy puts the empty glass on the bedside cabinet and turns back, the other man’s eyes are open (though his eyelids are drooping) and he’s smiling. A drop of water is forging a trail away from his lower lip; Ali turns his head and rubs his damp chin dry against Jimmy’s arm. When he turns back, they take one look at each other and dissolve into chuckles.

(It’s easier, Jimmy knows, so much easier, to do that than to think about the tightness in his chest.)

“Come on,” he says, “let’s get you in the shower.”

Ali makes a noise of complaint. “That means moving.”

“Yep.”

Ali whines a bit, but he stretches, and pushes himself more upright, wincing as he does. Jimmy helps him off the bed, settling a firm arm around his waist, and together they stumble to the bathroom and into the shower cubicle. Ali leans on Jimmy, warm and close and heavy, as Jimmy turns on the water, and then he hisses, again, as the first of the water hits him. “Feels like sunburn,” he says, with a low, sleepy-sounding chuckle, and Jimmy has an idea. He waits until Ali’s grown more alert, until he’s standing unaided, then gives him a quick kiss on the shoulder.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he says, opening the cubicle door and stepping out. Ali nods, tilting his face up towards the shower head, eyes closed, and for a long moment Jimmy just watches him: the water coursing over tanned skin, over cheekbones and jaw and arms and gloriously crimson arse. Then he heads out of the room, towelling himself down, turning off the music, hunting for his pants.

At some point he catches himself staring into space, thinking back over the evening; he doesn’t know how long he’s spent dreaming, but by the time Ali emerges, dressing has only progressed as far as pants and jeans.

Ali stops, a couple of steps from the bathroom, looking Jimmy up and down. “You’re leaving already.” It isn’t a question.

Jimmy fastens his belt, quickly. “Just going to get something.”

Ali shakes his head, looking down at the towel in his hands. “No, it’s fine. Sorry. I shouldn’t—”

Jimmy reaches for him, a light touch to his elbow. “I’ll be back,” he says. “Promise.” He spots Ali’s keycard on the counter by the TV, strides over to it. “Mind if I take this?”

Ali nods, without looking up. Jimmy decides it’s best to get going.

\--

A few minutes later, having rumpled up his own sheets to make the bed look slept in, Jimmy’s out of his room and about three feet from Ali’s door (tube of aftersun cream in one hand, keycard in the other) when he hears another door creak open behind him.

And, shortly after, a wolf whistle.

_Shit. Shit shit shit._

Painfully, inescapably aware that he’s both barefoot and bare-chested, Jimmy turns (hiding the keycard in his palm) to meet the raised eyebrows and sly grin of Broady.

“Aye aye, Jimmy.” Broady’s hanging on the handle of his half-open door, leaning out into the corridor. “Paying a visit?”

Jimmy sighs, rolling his eyes, to buy himself thinking time. “I, uh… He got sunburn. On his… arms…” _Shut up shut up._ “Said I’d lend him this.” He waggles the tube of aftersun, like it’s going to help.

“Must be urgent.” Broady’s smirk is roughly the size of the MCG. “Jimmy’s shirtless delivery service, for all your moisturising needs.”

Nothing else for it, Jimmy decides; he has to brazen it out.

“Any time you need me, mate, just call,” he says, turning away with a sniff. “I’ll ignore you as hard as I can.”

“Only Cooky gets the star treatment, then?”

“Got to keep the captain happy.” Jimmy glances back, forcing a smirk of his own. “That way he listens to my bowling plans instead of yours.”

Knowing he can’t use the key in front of Broady, he raps on Ali’s door with the tube of cream, like it’s the most casual thing in the world. Then he prays Ali doesn’t answer the door in his birthday suit. That’d be awkward.

(One way or another, though, it’d probably shut Broady up.)

Broady starts to say something else, then stops. “You’re no _fun,”_ he calls, over his shoulder (to someone Jimmy can’t see), then retreats, nodding at Jimmy.

As soon as Broady’s gone, Jimmy shoves the keycard into its slot and barges Ali’s door open, before anyone else can catch him. The other man’s standing by the bed, looking surprised, holding a towel that he’s clearly just whipped in front of his crotch.

“Was that you knocking, just now?”

Jimmy resolves, then and there, not to tell Ali about his encounter with Broady. No point worrying him for no reason. He nods – “Forgotten I’d taken your key” – and Ali relaxes. He tosses the towel behind him, onto the bed.

Jimmy lets himself enjoy the view. “Nice to see you not hiding yourself, for a change.”

Ali huffs a laugh. “This may be news to you, but my backside is rather tender, right now. Towel felt a bit rough.”

“Got just the thing for that.” Jimmy holds up the cream. “Lie down.”

Ali gives him an assessing look, then pushes pillows out of his way to settle down more or less the full length of the bed. He rests his head on crossed arms, near the headboard. Jimmy kneels beside him on the sheets, warms a dollop of cream between his palms, then goes in, gently. He starts at the top, where Ali’s lower back meets the curve of his arse, spreading the smooth cream in small circular motions across the marks he’s made; gradually working his way downwards, soothing and cooling the angry scarlet skin, adding more cream when he needs it. When he finally reaches the crease at the top of Ali’s thighs, the other man shifts a bit, makes a snuffling sound, settles again.

Jimmy smiles to himself as he reaches for the tube one more time. “You and your noises.”

“You said that earlier.” Ali looks round. “What, like… Am I really noisy? Unusually noisy?”

“No…” Jimmy can’t resist squirting from the tube directly onto Ali’s skin, this time; enjoys the little intake of breath as cold cream meets sore heat. “You just… you’ve got good range.”

Ali frowns. “Like what?”

“Let’s see.” Jimmy thinks about this as he swirls slick fingertips over toned skin. “There’s that squeaky little grunt you do when we’re just getting into it.”

“I do _not_ squeak!”

Jimmy tries not to smile. “You do. That one means _want,_ by the way.”

Ali buries his face in his arms. There’s some barely audible muttering. Jimmy goes back to rubbing in the cream, gently. Eventually the face comes up again, and it’s redder than his arse. Jimmy’s about to tell him that, but Ali speaks first.

“I don’t know who should be more embarrassed. Me, for _allegedly_ making the noise so much. Or you, for the fact that you’ve actually given it a _name.”_

Jimmy snorts, wiping his hands. “I’m going to give them _all_ names, from now on.”

“Hate you.”

There’s no fire in the words, but a heartbeat later Ali’s grabbed his forearm and Jimmy finds himself sprawled on the mattress.

Jimmy laughs, half-wheezing; rolls onto his side. “Sometimes I forget,” he says, ruefully, “how strong you are.”

“Idiot.” Ali closes the short distance between them to claim a lazy kiss. It doesn’t last long; Ali stops to yawn. “You’ve worn me out. Congratulations.”

“Good,” says Jimmy, watching as Ali lies back down, still on his belly, nestling into a couple of the pillows and wriggling to get his legs under the sheets. Jimmy clears his throat. “Good night’s sleep before the Test.”

“Mmm. Yeah.” Ali’s eyes are closed.

“Thought…” Jimmy swallows. “Thought I might stay, tonight.”

“You don’t have to.” Ali’s eyes are still closed.

“No, I…” Jimmy thinks of other noises: the sound of his palm hitting flesh, his own grunts of arousal. He is, still, afraid of this. “It’s been intense.”

“Has.” Now Ali looks at Jimmy: a heavy-lidded gaze above a sleepy smile. “Can’t quite believe we did that.”

“Me neither. So.” _Help me out here_ , he thinks. “I’ll stay. If that’s all right.”

Eyelids flicker closed again. “Sure.”

Jimmy hesitates a moment longer, waiting for something he can’t name. Then he takes off his jeans and slides under the sheets. With a bit of non-verbal coaxing, he ends up with Ali pressed up against him, head on his chest, arm flung across his abdomen, one leg hooked around his. In some way he can’t quite describe, Jimmy needs this tonight; needs the physical reassurance that Ali still trusts him, that what they’ve done hasn’t changed things. Needs to make sure Ali’s okay, under that drowsy bravado.

Apparently he is. Sleepy Ali quickly becomes sleeping Ali, and Jimmy finally lets himself relax, wrapping his arms around the other man. Ali feels warm, firm, a pleasantly solid sort of weight; his hair is damp against Jimmy’s skin. Jimmy breathes in the scent of Ali’s shower gel, listens to the soft sound of the other man’s breathing, and remembers that Ali let go, tonight, enough to call out his name.

It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

(It does.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The interview in which Alastair described Jimmy as "The most skilful bowler in the world" (ahhh) can be found here.
> 
> Readers joining the fic at this stage may like to know that the backstory to Jimmy's wariness about getting (as he puts it) aggressive with Alastair comes out of a past, somewhat problematic relationship with Michael Clarke. There's a bit about that relationship in the last chapter of ['Just a Bit of Fun'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3098189/chapters/7671392); he also discussed it with Alastair in [the last chapter of 'Not the Whole Story'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3674901/chapters/8880268). If that's not enough doomy angst for you, there's more, much more, in my on-going fic about the relationship, ['To Pull Your Halo Down'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3538022/chapters/7786064), which is told from Pup's perspective, sort of.


	4. Chapter 4

Alastair awakes gradually, drifting in and out of hazy dreams, with only a fragmentary awareness of his surroundings, until at some point his brain catches up enough to process the muted thump-thump he’s been hearing for the past little while.

His pillow has a pulse.

 _Oh crap_ , he’s sprawled all over Jimmy. He remembers, vaguely, that this seemed perfectly reasonable last night, but in the cold half-light of not-quite-day Jimmy’s clearly not going to like it and _how on earth does this count as keeping things simple, you idiot_ —

Alastair doesn’t actually _scramble_ away. It’s more dignified and controlled than that. But only just. Especially when he rolls over onto his back and yelps.

It’s not that his backside actually hurts, that much; the yelp is mostly surprise, or belated recollection. But the reason doesn’t matter; the noise, or the movement, or both, is enough to make Jimmy stir.

“Whuh—?” Jimmy squints at him. “…‘kay?”

It’s too dark, yet, to see the other man’s expression properly. But as Alastair’s eyes get used to the pre-dawn gloom, he can just about make out Jimmy’s hair, flopping over his forehead. He resists the urge to reach out and brush it back. “Bit sore. Fine, though.”

A grunt, then Jimmy is rolling over and pressing into him. An arm hooks around Alastair’s chest and a chin nestles against the top of his shoulder; a mouth and nose breathe warmth somewhere near the crook of his neck. Jimmy mumbles, but Alastair can only make out a few words: _need, got, later_. Pretty soon, it’s obvious that Jimmy has gone back to sleep.

Alastair lifts a hand, tentatively; touches the arm across his chest, and for a long moment he isn’t sure whether he wants to move that arm, or hold it there to make sure it doesn’t slip away.

He stares up at the ceiling, listens to the rain against the window; swallows. The fifth Test starts today. It’s the first morning of the deciding Test – the Test that’ll determine whether his team can escape its losing streak, and he can continue as its captain – and a part of him just wants to stay here, in this bed, with Jimmy.

He’s happy here. Not uncomplicatedly so, but he is.

In all sorts of ways, this thing with Jimmy has been different – has been _more_ , much more – than he thought it would be. He never pictured himself waking up in the other man’s arms. Never imagined that he’d want to. And now here he is, wishing he hadn’t panicked, and moved; Jimmy’s fast asleep, he could’ve got away with a bit longer.

But they’re still close, he reminds himself; more than close enough, considering. There are boundaries; there have to be boundaries. Jimmy said they should keep things simple, and he’s right, of course he is.

Alastair rolls over onto his side, so he’s facing away; taking care not to dislodge Jimmy’s arm as he does. Hesitates a bit, then shuffles backwards until he’s up against Jimmy. Then he cradles the other man’s hand against his chest, and, just for a little while, lets himself feel.

\--

When Alastair opens his eyes again – surprised and disorientated to realise he’s been asleep – the room is brighter, and it sounds like the rain’s stopped. He cranes his neck to get a look at the bedside cabinet, keen to check the time, but there’s no sign of his watch or his phone. Jimmy will have _his_ phone somewhere nearby, though; surely. But when Alastair starts to slide clear of Jimmy, the man behind him just grunts and shifts, and his arm wraps more snugly around Alastair. Taking care to be as quiet and gentle as he can, Alastair tries wriggling down the bed, he tries lifting Jimmy’s arm; even tries pushing the other man away. All to no avail: Jimmy’s arm is a secure prison. Eventually, Alastair gives up, with a sigh, and settles back against Jimmy.

The grunt from behind him is, this time, unmistakably a satisfied one.

And Alastair’s second sigh is exasperated. “You aren’t actually asleep, are you?”

A beat. “Well. I _was_ …”

Alastair glares at Jimmy over his shoulder. “I’ve been trying _so hard_ not to disturb you, and all this time, you’ve just been lying there awake, watching me, like… wriggle about.”

The other man’s pale, and bleary-eyed, but he’s got that set to his mouth that says he’s on the verge of smiling. “It was great wriggling, though. Some of your best work.”

Alastair continues to glare. “That smugness is going to get you in trouble one day.”

“One day. Not today, though?”

“It’s still early yet. At least, I hope it is.” Alastair’s already running through the list of things he needs to do before donning his blazer for the coin toss. “What time is it?”

Jimmy presses a kiss into the side of Alastair’s neck. “Who cares?”

Alastair rolls over – carefully, mindful of his tender backside – until he’s facing Jimmy. “Me.”

Jimmy grunts. “I know on that forced labour camp you call a _farm_ ” –Alastair feels Jimmy’s other arm worming its way underneath him, so his waist is now entirely encircled— “you’d probably be up by now. But as far as I’m concerned, it isn’t morning until my alarm goes off.”

“And when’s your alarm set for?”

He feels Jimmy shrug. “Not sure. Nine-ish?”

“ _Nine_?” Alastair struggles, but makes little headway against Jimmy’s grasp. He stops. “ _Right_. Time to decide who gets the new ball in your place today.” He raises his head, taps his chin. “Woakesy or CJ. Hmm…”

“I’m _joking_! I’m joking.”

Alastair looks back at him. “So am I. Mostly. But I really do need to know what time it is.”

No almost-smile anymore; Jimmy just looks grumpy. “You’re going to get up, aren’t you?”

“Depends what time it is.”

Jimmy watches him for a long moment; Alastair makes sure his expression gives no ground. At last Jimmy sighs, lets go – with one arm, anyway – and rolls onto his back, reaching over his head to grope at the cabinet on his side of the bed.

“Six-thirty,” he says, at last. He rolls back over, waving the phone at Alastair’s face. “See?”

“I see.” There’s something a bit passive-aggressive about the gesture; then again, if Jimmy did it because he guessed that Alastair wouldn’t believe him otherwise, he’s right.

Jimmy chucks his phone onto the bed behind him. “So…” He still has an arm under Alastair, and is stroking his lower back; but he’s also not looking up, and his voice is oddly tentative. “You getting up?”

Alastair weighs up his to-do list. “Not yet,” he says at last, shifting closer to the other man, until their faces are just a few inches apart, on the same pillow. Jimmy’s other arm comes back around him. “Fifteen minutes or so.” A thought occurs to him. “You know… you don’t have to get up when I do. Perfectly happy if you want to sleep on, here.”

Hands drifting down to his backside, though the touch there is light. “Not the same on my own.”

Alastair huffs a laugh; yawns. “Do you think about anything besides sex?”

“I think of _lots_ of things besides sex.” Jimmy sounds faintly hurt. Then he grins. “I think about blow jobs, and…”

Alastair gives him a look. His skin’s tingling where Jimmy’s fingertips are dancing over it. “Blow jobs _are_ sex.”

“That’s…” Jimmy’s mouth works, but no sound comes out; he’s smiling that helpless smile, the one he does when he knows he’s cornered. “That’s not true. They’re sex _related_.”

Alastair snorts, and withholds comment, pulling the covers that Jimmy disturbed when he reached for his phone back up over the other man.

“I _also_ think about food quite a lot. How I’m going to bowl the next ball. Where I can go for a nap. That sort of thing.” Jimmy moves his hands further up Alastair’s back, pulls him in closer. “But I’m not thinking about any of that right now. I’m just thinking that I’m all relaxed and warm and comfortable, and that you couldn’t possibly be _cruel_ enough to deprive me of that.”

Alastair gives him a flat stare.

“ _And_ , yes, okay, I’ve got you right where I want you for when I wake up properly.”

“Knew it.” Alastair resists the subtle pressure of Jimmy’s grip as it tries to reel him in.

“So… fifteen minutes. Sure you’ve got to get up that soon?”

“I’ve got to be at the ground by seven-thirty, at the latest. Need to look at the pitch, hit a few balls in the nets, check the latest forecast, decide who’s taking your place with the new ball, go over—”

“Okay, okay. Don’t need to explain. I believe you. I mean, I still think you do too much, but we had that argument in Southampton, and I lost, so...” Jimmy shrugs.

Alastair can’t help but smile, a little, at the memory. “I’m not sure it was an _argument_. Or that you lost, come to think of it. I stayed in bed that morning, didn’t I?”

“Only because I bribed you with sexual favours.”

“ _Favour_.” Alastair can’t resist the correction. “Yes, okay, you may have a point.” He grins. “Don’t knock it, though, as a strategy.”

“You know, I’ve heard that being smug can get you in trouble.”

“Must be a wise person who said that.”

“Ridiculous one, actually.” Again Jimmy tries to pull Alastair closer to him, and again Alastair resists, smirking. “Utterly, utterly ridiculous man, who seems to be determined to lie on his back or on his side, despite the fact that I tanned his arse for him last night.”

“ _Oh_. Right.” Alastair accepts the manhandling, this time; soon he’s back in more or less the position he woke up in, nestling against Jimmy’s chest, head somewhere below the other man’s chin. He shuffles about, unsure what to do with his hands. Eventually he tucks his right arm beneath him, folded into the little gap next to Jimmy’s side, and keeps his left arm close to his own body, palm flat to Jimmy’s chest, trying to make the contact as light as possible. Jimmy’s arms settle around him, warm and heavy.

For a while, Alastair holds himself still, and holds his breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop; waiting for Jimmy to realise what this is, and call a halt to it. A trouble-making little part of Alastair’s brain wants to ask how, exactly, this little burst of cuddling counts as keeping things simple, but the rest of him tells it to shut up and go away, because while he isn’t exactly calm, just now, this might never happen again, so he might as well make the most of it.

He feels fingertips start to trace slow, gentle, careless loops on his back, and sighs, a little, to let the other man know the sensation’s welcome. In a strange way, a way he doesn’t really understand but chooses not to question, it settles him.

And while he doesn’t forget the Test match, and doesn’t exactly stop doing a dry-run of preparations and game plans in his head, he feels more peaceful than he can remember being before a match since… well, since the last Test the previous summer, the Ashes already retained.

At length – a length of time he’s not certain of, but not too worried by, either – he feels ready to move. The stroking stopped a little while before; Jimmy has, Alastair realises, gone back to sleep again. This time, Alastair eases his way out of bed unhindered, and without disturbing the other man.

Once he’s showered and dressed, he takes a moment to watch Jimmy sleeping. He looks younger, with most of the lines smoothed from his face, and he’s moved a little, has one arm wrapped around a pillow – in a way that Alastair wants but also doesn’t want to think of as a substitution, now he’s not there with Jimmy. It’s something he could tease Jimmy for, but it seems best not to; if he draws attention to it, well.

He unplugs his phone from his charger, replaces it with Jimmy’s – he noticed, when Jimmy showed him the time, earlier, that the battery was low – and thinks about sending him a text, for when he wakes up. But what if the phone rings, or something? A star bowler needs his sleep, and Alastair needs not to get sidetracked again.

In the end, on an impulse, Alastair plucks a small sheet of hotel notepaper from the pad by the phone, and writes a message on that, instead.

_See you when you’ve woken up properly_

He folds it, tucks it under Jimmy’s phone, picks up his kitbag, and leaves the room, quietly.

\--

Crossing the boundary rope on twenty-four not out at stumps, Alastair is feeling pretty good about the world. His team has had about as successful a day as he could’ve hoped for, while India have gone through a repeat of their collapse in Manchester; had it not been for Dhoni, keeping his captain’s head while all about him were losing theirs, India’s innings would have been over before lunch. As it was, though, he and Sam still got almost twenty overs before the close of play, and negotiated them without a hitch.

Having the match to concentrate on gave Alastair chance to not think too much about last night, or this morning. Especially this morning. On a non-match day, it would’ve been harder not to brood, to wonder, to distract himself with vivid memories. As it is, he mostly kept his head in the game.

He and Jimmy perhaps embraced a bit longer and more firmly than was strictly necessary when Jimmy took his first wicket – Gambhir, in the very first over – and they certainly did when Alastair took the catch at first slip for Jimmy’s second, thirty overs later. That wicket, Binny’s, was the sixth to fall, for only forty-four runs, and by then Alastair had begun to think he was still asleep, and dreaming.

So all is fine: mature and professional and normal and _simple_. But then Jimmy brushes past him in the dressing room after stumps and says, quietly, “Dinner?”

And Alastair feels everything – all the unexpected warmth and tenderness of the morning – come flooding back at once. He needs time to get his breath back, to lessen the chance he’s going to say or do something stupid.

So he thinks quickly, and makes something up. “Already been claimed for tonight. Sorry.” The liar’s impulse to elaborate makes him add, “Going out with Joe and some of the others.” He tries to avoid naming everyone in his eyeline, just a plausible few. “Gary, I think, maybe Jos…”

He trails off. Jimmy’s expression has gone from mild disappointment to something much grumpier, and Alastair knows he’s been found out in his lie. Stricken, he watches the other man nod, and walk away. Can’t call him back, in the crowded dressing room, without drawing attention.

But there is one way, he realises.

He pitches his voice to carry. “Darts, later?” In his peripheral vision, he notices two or three of the other guys looking round; maybe listening.

Jimmy half-turns back. “Usual time,” he says, and Alastair can’t read his expression at all.

\--

“How’s the nose holding up?” isn’t _quite_ the first thing Jimmy says when he sits down to dinner with Broady and Finny and Sam, but it’s not far off.

Broady gives him an unimpressed stare across the table. Jimmy grins. He has to make at least one joke about Broady’s face per day; there are rules about these things.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the same rules also apply to him.

Broady smirks. “Almost didn’t recognise you with a shirt on.” He opens up his menu, shakes it out with both hands like it’s a newspaper. “Cooky’s sunburn any better today?”

Jimmy manages not to grind his teeth, very aware that Sam and Finny are within earshot, although they seem to be absorbed in catching up on Middlesex gossip. (Jimmy can’t help but wonder how much gossip there could possibly be; Finny has been around the England squad since before the last Test, yet he’s still updating Sam on what’s been happening with his county during the summer?) “Think so.” He shrugs. “Didn’t ask.”

“And where _is_ this famous sunburn?” Broady’s head tilts, chasing Jimmy’s gaze as Jimmy tries to look down at the table. “Couldn’t see anything today. He looked his usual bronzed self. Everywhere I could see, anyway.”

Jimmy tries very hard not to picture Ali’s arse as it looked last night, all round and red and tender. He fails. Instead, he forces his face to assume what he hopes is a suitably bored and slightly weirded-out expression. “Didn’t ask _that_ , either.”

Jimmy tenses himself for the next barb; prays that Ali played it safe when he was getting changed in the dressing room today, like Jimmy didn’t, at the hotel last night. He replays that encounter with Broady in his head, wishing he could go back and redo it; at least bother to put on a fucking t-shirt before he went out in the corridor. But no, he was an idiot. A complacent idiot.

Even if Broady doesn’t know what’s going on (and he surely doesn’t, not really) just one comment made where someone else can hear might be enough: to plant seeds of suspicion; to get people looking at Jimmy and Ali more closely. Even if it _is_ just a joke, even if it’s well meant; who knows where a rumour might end up, once it starts? Jimmy knows he needs to talk to Broady, privately.

(But that, in turn, needs careful thought. He has to work out a way to make Broady keep his trap shut, without giving the game away in the process.)

The more people who know a secret, the riskier it is. Jimmy knows this. He _knows_ it. He should’ve taken Ali more seriously, back in Manchester.

His mistake. His problem to sort out. Jimmy counts his breaths until he’s calm again.

But here is what separates Broady from Swanny: Stu subsides, where Graeme would’ve pushed. Not without a slightly smug smile (and a brief, sharp glance at Finny, sitting next to him), but Broady changes the subject, nonetheless.

Still mockery, but at least not dangerous mockery.

“Feeling good about tomorrow’s match?”

Jimmy grunts. Burnley are hosting Chelsea in their opening match of the new season. Even an optimist (which Jimmy isn’t) would have to concede that it’s unlikely to go well. “Baptism of fire,” he says.

More smirking. “They closed the book, yet, on how soon you’re going to get relegated?”

Jimmy can’t let _that_ stand. “Least we’re _in_ the Premiership.”

Broady sits up straighter, mouth open, eyes bright. “Hear that, Steve? He’s _impugning_ our division.”

Finny glances over, shakes his head with a smile. “Unprovoked, no doubt.”

“And what titans of the footballing world are Forest playing this weekend?” Jimmy says, sweetly. “Huddersfield? Blackpool?”

Broady makes a face. “Blackpool was last week. We’re at Bolton this week.”

Jimmy fakes a shiver. “Fearsome.”

“Watford beat Bolton three-nil last week,” Finny chips in, without looking up from his menu. “No pressure, though.”

Broady rounds on him. “You’re going to regret saying that when we kick your arses later in the season.”

Finny says, “October twenty-first? Bring it,” at exactly the same time that Broady declares, “Twenty-first of October, we’re—”

Jimmy rolls his eyes as the pair of them dissolve into laughter. He nudges Sam. “Sorry about these two. Back in the day, fast bowler banter had a bit more bite to it.”

“Don’t worry.” Sam smiles, fondly. “I’m used to Finny.”

“Now the new season’s started,” says Finny, “do you reckon they’ll let us play football in the warm-ups, instead of rugby?”

“ _Well_.” Broady sucks in a breath with a hiss, and immediately starts recounting one of the injury stories that have – strangely enough – put the coaching staff right off football.

Jimmy’s mind, meanwhile, goes somewhere else entirely; back to a short but memorable conversation he had with Ali the last time they were in London, about rugby tackles and the potential they offer for physical contact no-one watching would blink an eye at.

 _It’s a game that more or less requires groping_ , Jimmy remembers Ali saying, his face glowing with delight and mischief in that way Jimmy’s come to enjoy so much. (Like everything’s a discovery for him; like finding new ways to flirt is his favourite game.) Even pointing out that they were supposed to be playing no-tackles rugby didn’t deter him.

Jimmy decides that he’d give a lot, just now, for Ali to be sitting beside him, instead of Ali’s opening partner.

Not that Jimmy has anything against Sam; it’s just that he’d rather have _something_ against Ali. As it were. The patterned tablecloth’s long enough to offer plenty of concealment; even if he couldn’t persuade Ali to sneak off to the loo with him, they could, at the very least, sit with their knees touching, or something.

(A private reminder, a reinforcement, of the secret they share.)

Their orders are taken; their drinks are brought. Broady and Finny continue to tease each other about football; Sam joins Broady in teasing Finny. Jimmy feels like Broady doesn’t really need the help, but he’s only half-listening; now his brain has strayed onto Ali, it won’t budge off the topic. Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s slipped his phone from his pocket, gone into his text menu and tapped on Ali’s name.

He’s got no good reason to text him. Nothing to actually say. Knows he just wants to see the other man’s name on his screen; worries that he wants that mostly because Ali is out with Joe. But there was a note for him this morning, when he woke up, and somehow he wants to return the favour.

As he ponders what to say, he scrolls through their previous exchanges (they date back years), absently; more a fidget than a foray into re-reading. The recent stuff is patchy, pruned of anything remotely suggestive.

(With one exception. Three words, one misspelled, from Manchester: _im the perk_. He kept it because it made him laugh so much when he got it, even though he was feeling so grotty that morning; he keeps it now, still, because it makes him smile to see it again. He’s deleted everything that was around it, shorn it of context – especially the text it was a reply to, his own, _Got to be some perks to sleeping with the captain_ – to ensure that its meaning lives only in his memory.)

Fuck it; he’s never going to think of something worth sending, so boring will do: _Having a good evening?_

At the table, the conversation drifts onto other things. Something to do with superhero films, or maybe being a superhero. Jimmy’s on the verge of getting drawn in, when a buzz from his phone saves him. He keeps his face straight as he taps on Ali’s message, but inside he’s got a strangely bubbly, excited feeling.

_yes :) you?_

_Not bad. Too much football talk not enough groping_. He thinks about that for a moment, and is in the middle of typing a quick follow-up, to clarify ( _Of you, not Finny_ ), when he discovers Ali’s beaten him to the punch.

_you flirting with finny again? starting to wonder should i be jealous_

_Could be worse_ , Jimmy writes back. _Could be Broady_

(Or Joe. He isn’t going to say that.)

_haha. for the record im sure you wd make a lovely couple ;)_

Jimmy snorts. He isn’t sure when Ali learned to use smilies; probably about the time everyone else moved over to emojis.

 _Confident we wouldn’t_. He glances across at Broady, involuntarily. _Drive each other up the wall_

_thought you LIKE being grumpy_

(Open goal, really.) _Not in bed I don’t_

Silence for a few minutes. Ali’s next message arrives at the same time as the food.

_so many ways i could reply to that honestly im spoilt for choice_

_I’ll think of something_ , Jimmy types. _See you later_. Then, aware of Broady’s gaze on him again, he puts his phone away, and tries to concentrate on dinner.

\--

Back at the hotel, Jimmy leaves the other three gearing up to play Fifa in Broady’s room, calls home, then knocks on Ali’s door.

Ali looks surprised. “Everything okay? You’re early.”

Jimmy glances at his slender little wristwatch. So he is; fifteen minutes. “I, uh… I was bored.” He shrugs. “And you promised me darts.”

Dazzling smile. “True.”

Ali steps aside to let him in. Jimmy trails his fingertips across Ali’s belly, just above the waistband of his jeans, as he passes him. It earns him a sharp intake of breath just before Ali closes the door.

The room’s narrow here, just a corridor past the bathroom. Jimmy exploits it, backing Ali against the wall with a half-step. “Darts _is_ code for sex, right?” He tugs at Ali’s grey polo shirt, pulling it out of his jeans, slowly.

A head tilt. “Whatever makes you think that?”

Ali’s keeping his own arms clear, giving Jimmy plenty of space to work. His skin, under his shirt, is wonderful and warm; Jimmy’s been wanting to touch it all day.

“Well, when I woke up this morning, there was this _note_ , you see.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.” (It’s in Jimmy’s back pocket right now. He isn’t going to admit that. He’d vaguely had in mind pulling it out when Ali opened the door, but Ali’s comment about being early threw him off his game.) “ _See you when you’re more awake_ , I think it said.” (He knows exactly what it said, but isn’t going to admit _that_ , either. He can picture it now: that careful, measured, almost childishly neat handwriting. Nothing special, and yet he’s read and re-read it. Nothing special, and yet it spent the day in his kitbag and is sitting in his pocket, now.) “Sounded to me like the man who wrote it was sad because he missed out on some fun this morning.”

Ali closes his eyes, leans back against the wall. His sigh sounds contented. “We could do both.”

Jimmy closes the gap, kisses Ali’s smile; digs his fingers, just a little, into the flesh by Ali’s hips, and the other man’s lips part, tempting him into a deeper kiss. He gives it. “Sounds risky,” he says, after.

“I was mostly thinking one and then the other, but I guess we could combine them.”

“What, like… strip darts?”

Ali flicks a glance up to the ceiling, his expression luminous with feigned innocence. “Now _there_ ’s an idea…”

Matching grins slowly become chuckles.

“Sounds good.” Jimmy wraps his arms around Ali’s waist; nuzzles behind his ear. He can feel the day’s overs in his legs, and really all he wants right now is to be in bed having slow, lazy sex. “Let’s do strip darts another time.”

“Okay. When we win the series.”

And it’s good – it feels _so_ good – to hear the other man talk like that, after everything that’s happened over the past year. All Jimmy says, though – keeping his face over Ali’s shoulder, so his expression can’t be seen – is, “You’re confident.”

Ali’s arms curl around him. “I’ve got a team I can rely on.”

Jimmy thinks, again, about Broady catching him in the corridor last night, and tightens his hold on Ali. (He _will_ sort that out, he promises himself. Soon.) “You do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What football team Jimmy actually supports is, as I recall, a bit of a source of teasing, but for the purposes of this chapter, he's got his home-town loyalty going on.
> 
> ObReferences to previous fics, hint-dropping edition:
> 
> 1) Regarding whether Broady knows about Jimmy and Alastair's not-relationship: he's had his suspicions since just before they got together (as briefly referenced in my first Brinn fic, ['An Hour Behind the Summer'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3351530), which parallels the events of ['Say What You Mean', chapter one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2722235/chapters/6097313)). The first time Broady cracked and said something to them was in [chapter 3 of 'Caught Up In Confusion and Skin'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4872427/chapters/11401708), but there were a couple of hints before that; the one that springs to mind is in [chapter 3 of 'Not the Whole Story'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3674901/chapters/8438464). Oh, and, this is what Broady was trying to find a way to invite Jimmy to talk to him about in [chapter 3 of 'Take a Deep Breath'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4165137/chapters/9798066), although Jimmy was oblivious.
> 
> Let it never be said I don't leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Or that I'm not a touch obsessive. One of those things.
> 
> (What a strange coincidence that some many of these Broady moments are in third chapters. Huh.)
> 
> 2) The 'argument' in Southampton was back in [chapter 5 of 'Take a Deep Breath'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4165137/chapters/10014815).


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to plumjaffas/piranhafish, twistsofsilver/twowittoowhoo, and knockmeforsix/labonnetouche for reading through this and giving me advice. Also for general support at various, much-needed times over the past year(!) it's taken me to get 'An Indian Summer' finished.
> 
> Finished. Huh. Wow. That sounds quite strange, when you type it.

On the day that they do, in fact, win the series, Jimmy makes a mistake. Several mistakes.

None of them happen on the field; he can be grateful for _that_ , at least. Two for sixteen, both of them top order wickets, off eight overs: not a bad day’s work, especially during an innings in which the opposition collapse for ninety-four. The Player of the Series award feels a bit weird, all things considered, but Ali (standing beside him, full of relief and glee, as they wait for the presentations to start) suggests it might be a gesture of conciliation from Duncan Fletcher and the Indian camp.

“Not that you don’t deserve it for your _bowling_ , obviously, I mean you’ve been _amazing_ in this series, especially given everything that’s happened, you know, but it’s not _about_ that, we really couldn’t have done it without you...”

Jimmy chooses not to interrupt, as Ali goes on; chooses not to point out that Duncan Fletcher never made a conciliatory gesture in his life. (Partly thanks to Swanny, Jimmy has a healthy dislike of the former England coach.) Instead he smiles at Ali, really lets himself smile. Enjoying this Ali, giddy with victory: the dazed look in his eyes and the way the words spill out of him.

(Later, being interviewed up on the podium, Ali praises the support of his wife, this summer, and Jimmy doesn’t let himself react.)

Jimmy makes his first mistake when they go up for their winner’s medals. They’re assembled for the photo op with the trophy, cheering and yelling and popping the champagne corks, when Joe (of course) barges in, flinging a skinny arm around Ali’s neck and pouring champagne over him.

Jimmy was going to do that. Okay, he probably wasn’t, not in public. He _wanted_ to do that. But he made a mistake: he hung back, just a bit too long, and now he’s missed his chance.

Ali’s got his hands full of trophy, and can’t do much to fend off the fizz. (It’s a good look on him.) Gary, CJ, and Woakesy team up to drench Sam; Jimmy lets fly with his own bottle. Mo darts out of the way of the spray. When the bottles are exhausted, Jimmy sees CJ wiping his hand carefully on his shirt before he puts an arm back around Mo’s waist for the next photo.

After, with some fizz in his belly, Jimmy catches up with a soaked, beaming Ali on the lap of honour. They walk arm-in-arm, briefly; they pose with the trophy.

“So… strip darts, then?” he manages to murmur in Ali’s ear, and the other man grins, waving the half-empty bottle in his fist.

“Ready whenever you are,” he says, before he’s whisked away for more photographs.

The atmosphere back in the dressing room is decidedly merry. It’s one of those afternoons – because they have, again, finished things off before tea – that disappears, rapidly, in the clink of bottles (first champagne and then, when that runs out, beer) and the shared laughter of release from pressure.

Wandering back along the corridor from the loo, Jimmy reflects that in a few days, he’ll start missing this series. He loves the edge that competition gives him; thrives on the responsibility of leading an attack, and never more so than in the long, searching examination of a Test series. He’ll miss that, once it’s sunk in that it’s over; but not right now. He’s sent down a lot of overs this summer, and here’s been a lot of off-field stress, some of it his own fault. Right now, all he wants to do is sit down and feel the booze seeping through his body, relaxing his muscles.

No, that’s not true. It’s not _all_ he wants to do. But he’s been careful, this afternoon; patient. Keeping half a wary eye on Broady. (He still needs to do something about that, although a cowardly part of him wonders if he has to, now that Broady is going to be out until January, having a knee op.) Keeping his distance from Ali.

Ali, who’s now – Jimmy sees, as he steps back into the dressing room – sitting next to Joe, laughing uproariously at fuck knows what.

Jimmy feels a sudden, absurd need to mark his territory, and if he’d had less to drink – he’ll decide, later, counting off his second mistake of the evening – he probably wouldn’t give in to the urge. But.

“All right, trouble?” he’s saying, a moment later. Gruffly, but fighting a losing battle against a smile, because he does _like_ Joe; it’s simply that he wants him somewhere _else_. “Just seen Gary.” (This is true; Gary was also in the bathroom.) “He was talking about trying to score some more fizz.”

(This is not true. Gary was _actually_ telling a long story about a girl he likes, and asking whether it was worth texting her a shirtless photo in which he’s less pissed than the one from that student newspaper earlier in the summer. Jimmy can’t remember what advice he gave, but he’s sure it was excellent.)

Joe whoops, raising his arms and almost knocking Ali’s drink from his hand. “Fan _tas_ tic!” he says, and stays right where he is.

Jimmy doesn’t grind his teeth, not even slightly. “Why don’t you go give him a hand?”

Joe’s face lights up. “Good _idea_.” He stops, halfway to his feet. “Where is he?”

Jimmy blinks. “I, uh… heading for the kitchens, maybe?”

“Right.” Joe looks like he’s about to leave, then pauses to (of course) enfold Jimmy in a beery hug. “You’re _brilliant_ , Jimmy."

“Thanks,” Jimmy croaks. Joe’s shoved his head in hard against Jimmy’s neck, half-crushing Jimmy’s throat. “And ow.”

Joe releases him. “Back in a bit!”

As he dances out, Jimmy lowers himself down to the bench beside Ali, with a sigh.

Ali’s watching him through narrowed eyes. “What was that about?”

Jimmy looks away, takes a swig of beer. “What was what about?” he says, an innocently as he can.

“Sending Joe off to run your errands.”

Jimmy examines his bottle. “He was sitting in my seat.”

“Oh, it’s _your_ seat, is it?” From the corner of his eye, Jimmy sees Ali smirk.

“It’s next to you.” Jimmy shrugs. “Therefore.”

Ali goes quiet; he’s blushing, cheekbones outlined in scarlet. His eyelids are drooping, the way they do when he’s tired or pissed. “Enjoying yourself?” he says, at last.

Jimmy leans into the wall. “Yeah.”

“Ready to, you know… head off, soon?”

“In a bit.” He sneaks another glance at Ali, or more specifically at the still-soaked shirt sticking to his skin. Like in the rain, in Manchester, but more so. “Victory suits you.”

The flush deepens. “I was actually just going to go and get changed.”

“Don’t. Told you before, I like the wet t-shirt look on you. Everything’s very nicely… defined.”

“I’m sticky.” Rueful smile. “And starting to get cold.”

Jimmy lets his gaze roam over the tiny tell-tale peaks in the white fabric. “I can see that.”

Ali coughs; gives him a look.

Jimmy puts his beer down beside him, and draws up his foot, the one closest to Ali, onto the bench; angles his knee so his calf offers some concealment from the rest of the room. Then he slips a hand behind Ali’s back, peels the shirt away, starts tracing patterns on the damp skin where Ali’s lower back meets the curve of his arse. “I can think of a few things we could do to warm you up.”

This wet shirt thing, Jimmy decides, is great. Much as Ali stays still, keeps a straight face, doesn’t make a sound, with his shirt clinging to him it’s completely obvious that his breathing has sped up.

“Is this wise?” Ali says, but Jimmy can hear the slight tremor of excitement in his voice.

Jimmy looks over at Broady, but the man with the pair of black eyes is deep in conversation with CJ and Mo. “One thing I learned from Swanny. You can get away with a lot of public flirting if you exaggerate it enough. Everyone thinks you’re joking.”

“You and Swanny _were_ joking. And this is a bit more than flirting.”

Jimmy ignores that, trailing his fingertips lower, pushing inside the waistband of Ali’s trousers. Ali gasps, faintly, and Jimmy pauses. “Two taps?”

Ali swallows. It’s a delight to watch. “One.”

Scrutinising the rest of the room for any sign they’re being watched, Jimmy finds his way by touch, down over the band of Ali’s jockstrap. Ali’s pants are too tight for Jimmy to manoeuvre his way inside, from this angle and in public, so he slides his fingers over the top of them, down between the cheeks of his arse.

Ali shifts, but only to drape an arm across his lap, wrist over his groin. Jimmy smiles, and continues, although his heartbeat is thundering and he can feel a little sweat trickling down his temples, now: down and down until he finds a seam, and bare skin beyond it. The cotton’s looser, here, he can _just_ slip a finger inside, inch it inwards until it meets puckered skin—

Another noise from Ali: almost a whimper. Jimmy glances quickly at the other man – he’s got the neck of his beer bottle pressed against his mouth, now – and then away again.

“Two taps?" 

He feels Ali shift; then a single prod to his calf, and Jimmy hasn’t been this turned on in public in his life. Possibilities unfolding before him. Ali so responsive; himself so in control.

“ _Fuck_ … I want to make you come,” Jimmy says, voice pitched as low as he can make it and still be heard by the man beside him. “Right here.”

It’s just bluster; he’s not drunk or dumb enough to actually try it. No way he can get a hand down the front of Ali’s trousers without being seen, after all. But it’s delicious to imagine, and even more so to watch Ali’s face as _he_ imagines it. It’s round about time, Jimmy reckons, to spirit Ali away.

He’s just plotting his strategy when the champagne train crashes back through the door and ruins _everything_.

Several things happen at once.

Ali jumps, and juggles his beer; Jimmy tries to yank his hand away, and gets his fingers snarled up in pants; and a triumphant Joe waltzes over and plonks himself _right_ in Ali’s lap.

(Oh _shit_.)

\--

Alastair’s first reaction when Joe’s bony backside drops onto his thighs, heavily, is completely involuntary: he yelps. Loudly.

His next move is to lunge forward and fling both arms around Joe to stop him falling off, because there’s a good chance he’s going to drag Alastair’s trousers with him and there aren’t words to _describe_ how awkward that would be just at this moment. In the process, Alastair’s beer bottle goes flying, with a cacophonous clatter that grabs the attention of anyone who wasn’t _already_ looking over and laughing. Luckily, it doesn’t break; luckily, it goes skidding away, spraying foaming lager across the floor and taking everyone’s gazes with it, just long enough that Alastair’s _almost_ sure no-one’s watching when Jimmy’s wandering hand finally retreats.

Heart pounding, Alastair breathes a sigh of relief; but he keeps clinging to Joe. Later, he will realise that this wasn’t a very good idea, but it seems (relatively) sensible now, for three reasons. In order of urgency, these reasons are:

  1. It’s the best way to stop Joe shuffling further up his thighs, towards what might best be described as the danger zone, i.e. the tent Alastair is currently pitching in his trousers;
  2. If Alastair’s bending forward, and Joe’s perching on his knee, said danger zone is obscured from everyone else’s view until it calms down a bit; and, last but not least,
  3. Jimmy was really quite hot the other day when he did that whole playful jealousy routine, so maybe doing this will conjure up the same effect.



The third reason is, admittedly, not all that sensible. But it sidles into his brain: late, irresponsible, and completely irresistible, like Jimmy himself when he turns up to a ground with about half an hour to spare before the day’s play begins.

And once the idea’s there, there’s no dislodging it.

So when Joe’s arm settles lightly around Alastair’s shoulders, Alastair snuggles in a bit closer, burying his face in Joe’s chest. He hears a wolf whistle from across the room, and someone – Gary? – calling for a camera.

Closer to home, there’s a soft chuckle. “Had a bit to drink, Cooky?” A hand starts combing, gently, through his hair. “You deserve it. Doesn’t he deserve it, Jimmy?”

A grunt from somewhere behind him. Ideally, Alastair would prefer to see Jimmy’s face, so he can tell how much longer he needs to do this for; but he’ll have to go on sound. Not that he’s anxious to get _away_ from Joe – actually, this is rather nice, and on any other day he might be quite happy to sit like this for a while – but it’s not exactly what he _wants_ , just now. He wants Jimmy pinning him up against a wall. Preferably sooner rather than later.

But yes, Alastair decides. He _does_ deserve to be a bit drunk. Not that he is; he’s fine. But if he _was_ drunk, well. If you can’t let your hair down when your team has won a series so emphatically – and after going one-nil down, too – when _can_ you?

Oh, hey; Joe’s talking again. _Hi, Joe_ , he thinks, or possibly says (hard to tell); _I like you_.

“…and everyone was so good! _So_ good. Jimmy, that delivery, the one you got Pujara with, oh my _god_ that was amazing. Wasn’t it amazing, Cooky?”

Sounds like Joe, too, has had a bit to drink. Alastair smiles into the younger man’s shirt, hugs him a bit tighter. “Yeah,” he says. “Jimmy’s one of a kind.” 

“He _is_! He is he is. So you _see_ , you don’t need to be _grumpy_ , Jimmy. Not tonight. Be _happy_.”

 _Aha_ , Alastair thinks, curling his fingers tight in the fabric of Joe’s shirt. Grumpy? _Almost there_.

He feels another hand, heavier, patting his back between his shoulderblades; hears the soft voice of Jos. (How long has _he_ been here?) “You all right there, Cooky?”

“I’m good,” says Alastair, spotting his chance to push things. “Joe’s very comfy. I think he’s been spending time in the gym.”

Jimmy clears his throat. “I’ll leave you lot to it,” he says, and Alastair catches his breath.

“Don’t _go_ ,” says Joe, his voice a plaintive trill.

“Don’t panic, trouble.” Jimmy sounds gruff. “I’m only off for a piss.”

Alastair listens for the door closing, then counts to five, and sits up. “That, uh… That sounds like a _really_ good idea. ‘Scuse me, Joe.” He disentangles himself.

Joe grins. “One too many?”

“More like three,” says Alastair, fervently. The other two laugh, but that’s what Alastair was hoping for; as he pushes his way through the dressing-room door, he knows that if anyone spots that he’s moving a bit gingerly, they’ll assume it’s because he’s desperate for the loo.

No other reason. As he scurries after Jimmy, Alastair grins to himself.

\--

Jimmy doesn’t need a piss, of course, and he only gets as far as the bathroom door before embarrassment overcomes his irritation at Joe – at Ali and Joe – and he stops, hands on hips. He knows this is fucking stupid. He knows it. It’s one of the reasons he left the dressing room. Annoyed with his own annoyance.

It was the timing, as much as anything. One minute he had Ali exactly where he wanted, the next Ali was nuzzling Joe’s skinny chest and hugging the lad like he was a tipsy Yorkshire teddy bear, leaving Jimmy to watch from the sidelines.

He taps the toe of his boot against the wall, thinking about this. It wasn’t just the timing, was it? Truth is, it’s hard to watch Ali with Joe at the best of times. There’s something about the way they are together that just makes Jimmy _itch_.

But tonight they really _were_ all over each other—

“Hi.”

Jimmy turns, and for a long moment he can’t find any words, because Ali’s just standing there, all flushed and mussed and damp, whites clinging to him in a way that makes his desire utterly obvious.

“I thought I’d, uh… Okay, so I haven’t really thought this part through—”

Jimmy doesn’t let him get to the end of it; he lunges forward and grabs both of Ali’s arms at the elbows, pressing his mouth hard over the other man’s, enjoying the way Ali’s muffled voice quickly gives way to the _want_ sound. There’s a gap between their bodies, and Ali tries to close it, but Jimmy holds him firmly at bay, until he’s done with the kiss.

“In there.” He pushes the other man towards the bathroom door. “Now.”

Ali stumbles forward, then reaches back, snatches a fistful of Jimmy’s shirt, drags him inside with him. Two breaths, at most, and they’re across the harshly lit room and Jimmy’s bundling Ali into a cubicle. The dark grey door hits the partition wall so hard that it bounces back at them, and smacks Jimmy in the shoulder. He doesn’t care; he’s too busy crowding Ali against the opposite wall and shoving his shirt up his chest.

“Thought you liked the wet shirt look,” says Ali, between gasps.

Jimmy slides a hand up Ali’s chest, or tries to; his palm judders over the sticky skin. He pinches a nipple, hard, gets a sharp little cry. “Like the real thing even more.”

Jimmy dips his head, touches lips and tongue to the side of Ali’s neck as the other man moans. Ali’s skin tastes of the victory champagne he’s been drenched in; champagne, and sweat, and the latter must surely belong to someone else. (No prizes for guessing.) Jimmy wants to snarl; administers a nip to Ali’s throat, instead, then mutters, “Mine,” and starts on something more sustained in the same spot.

One of Ali’s hands is suddenly on Jimmy’s jaw, pushing his face a couple of inches away. “Not there.”

“ _What_ —”

“Told you before.” Ali’s breathing hard. “No marks there.” He smirks. “I like you pos… possessive” —he slurs the word, struggling with the sibilants— “but nothing too obvious.”

Jimmy slips a hand around Ali’s wrist, but doesn’t – yet – dislodge the other man’s grip on his jaw. “ _Obvious_?” He can hear a sneer in his voice that he didn’t mean to put there. “You mean like you and Joe?”

As soon as he’s said it, he freezes, wishing he could snatch the words back from the air. Never mind tone of voice; he didn’t mean to _say_ them, full stop.

(This is his third mistake of the day. Bloody alcohol.)

Ali just huffs a laugh. “Did I overdo it? Hope Jos didn’t mind.”

“ _Jos_?” Now Jimmy does push Ali’s hand away, and step back. (Ali’s shirt falls partway back down his chest.) “What’s _he_ got to do with anything?”

“You can’t _possibly_ have missed—” Ali’s shaking his head, smiling; then he stops, staring at Jimmy. “Oh. _Oh_.” He lifts a hand; it hovers for a moment, then he presses it to his own chest, smoothing over his creased shirt with jerky little movements. “Look, I never meant to… I just wanted to get your _attention_ , it was just a bit of _fun_ , you know, like you flirting with Finny—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Jimmy turns away; he wants to shut this down, quickly, and find some more beer. He’s aware of his heart beating, hard; is trying very hard not to think of anything. “Forget it.”

“No, I am _so_ sorry. If I’d known you were bothered…”

“I’m _not_.” Jimmy takes a moment, steadies his voice. _I’m not_ , he tells himself. “He’s just… always _there_. Getting in the way.” He stares down at his feet, listening to the other man not saying a word; wondering what he’s thinking. “Never mind. Forget it.”

When Jimmy looks up, Ali’s got his arms folded. His jaw is set, firmly. Jimmy looks away again, quickly.

“Listen to me,” Ali says. “Joe’s my best batsman. He’s more or less my second-in-command. He’s been a huge support to me this summer, and he’s probably going to take over as captain when I quit.” He sighs. “ _And_ , he’s my _friend_. I’m not going to stop spending time with him. I mean, it’s my _job_ to spend time with him, but I also want to. And if you can’t handle that, then…”

Jimmy’s feeling about three feet tall, by now, but he bristles at that. “Then _what_?”

“Then… you need to _learn_ to handle it. Look, he’s not a threat to—” Ali stops, then says, more slowly, “I don’t want him. I want _you_. Okay?”

Jimmy wishes he’d never said anything. He’s got a host of conflicting thoughts, but he doesn’t have the words to explain and probably wouldn’t use them even if he did.  This is what he wants to say: _He’s everything I’m not_. He stops himself. It isn’t a thought he’s had before. He doesn’t know what it means. Doesn’t want to. For the sake of getting out of an awkward situation (and because there’s no rational reason to say, or be, anything else), he mutters, “Okay.”

“Good,” says Ali. Abruptly, he snorts, and adds, briskly, “Anyway, he’s not interested in me. He’s taken.”

That, at least, stirs Jimmy into an honest reaction; into looking at Ali, again. “Yeah, _right_. How could he _not_ be interested—?” He frowns as he catches the rest of what Ali said. “Wait, taken? By who?”

“Jos,” says Ali, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. His face is flushed, with booze, or something else.

Jimmy laughs. “Jos…? Come _on_. That’s— How do you know?”

Ali looks away. “The way Joe talks about him. He goes all pink and his voice shakes a bit and he gets this… _smile_. I know, I know he smiles a lot, but this one’s _different_ , it’s…” He huffs a laugh; it sounds brittle. “I recognise it.”

Jimmy watches him, trying not to think about anything other than the line of that jaw, the set of those lips. He reaches out; lets his fingertips brush down the other man’s cheek, over the stubble around his mouth. “Sorry,” he says, quietly. “I’m an idiot.”

Ali shakes his head. “If you are, then so am I. I messed up. And now I think I’m sobering up.” He grimaces. “Can we do something about that?”

“There’s _nothing_ I’d rather do right now.” Jimmy leans in, cranes his neck, and kisses Ali’s temple. For a moment, he doesn’t want to move away again. “I’ll grab some fizz. Meet you downstairs?”

Ali nods. “I’ll call a taxi.” He catches Jimmy’s hand, squeezes it, then strides out of the bathroom, leaving Jimmy to watch him go.

Jimmy doesn’t believe the thing about Joe and Jos. Not for a minute. (Joe has a massive crush on Ali, end of story.) Although, when he nips back in the dressing room for a spare bottle and his wallet, the pair _are_ sitting very close together and they _do_ look pretty absorbed in each other—

 _Nah_ , he tells himself. A Lanky and a Yorkie? It’d never work.

\--

With entirely predictable speed, drunken strip darts turns into shamelessly cheating strip darts.

Alastair’s a bit off his game – he gets all of ten minutes to enjoy his nice, clean, non-sticky shirt before it ends up over the back of a chair – but Jimmy’s no better, having sampled the champagne fairly extensively, it seems, while Alastair was in the shower. After three rounds, Jimmy is down to just his pants and Alastair is struggling to control his mirth as he sips fizz from his favourite red mug.

In response, Jimmy just raises his eyebrows, but when Alastair’s next lining up for a throw, a pair of hands slips around his waist.

"Oi,” he says, without either looking round or lowering his arm.

“Just trying to help you out,” says Jimmy. “Your front leg looked a bit unstable.”

“Yeah, you’re so selfless,” says Alastair, and takes his throw. Triple twenty. “ _Ha_.”

He turns his head to plant a sarcastic kiss on Jimmy’s cheek, and almost misses the other man’s face entirely. He pretends he was always aiming for Jimmy’s neck, and turns back for his next throw. As he does, fingers drift downwards, dip inside the waistband of his jeans. He draws in a breath, keeps going, but just as he’s about to release his next dart, drifting becomes tickling. He convulses, and the dart ends up stuck in the carpet, four feet away.

“You should forfeit the round for that,” says Alastair, when he’s got his breath back.

“All’s fair,” says Jimmy with a grin, “in sex and darts.”

From then on, it’s dirty tricks all the way: groping, tickling, tripping; accidental nudges to throwing arms, brisk slaps to backsides, sneaky kicks to ankles. (Jimmy looks very miffed by that last one, rubbing his ankle vigorously while Alastair laughs.) Significantly more darts end up bouncing off the door than landing in the board.

In the end, though, Jimmy edges the round, and stands contemplating Alastair with the sort of smile that makes Alastair’s tipsy giggles fade, and brings heat to his belly.

“Did you mean what you said, before? About liking me being possessive?”

 _As long as it’s just a game_ , Alastair thinks, but this seems like it might not be the best time to mention Joe. He doesn’t, in truth, know what to think about all that, yet. “Within reason,” he says.

“Okay, then. Rule change. Rather than take something off you, this round, I want to _add_ something.”

Jimmy bends down, plucks his black leather belt up from the carpet, and strolls over: holding the buckle in his right hand, running the leather between the forefinger and thumb of his left.

Alastair’s mouth goes dry.

Jimmy stops in front of him, loops the belt up over Alastair’s head, and Alastair stands very still, feeling it settle against the nape of his neck. Next, somewhere down near the bottom of Alastair’s ribcage, Jimmy feeds the end of the belt through the slender buckle. Then, gaze fixed unerringly on Alastair’s face and keeping hold of the end in his left hand, he pushes the buckle upwards, slowly, drawing more and more of the belt through it, as if he’s preparing to fasten it. The leather snakes its way around Alastair’s neck as Jimmy makes the loop smaller, and tighter, bit by bit, until Alastair has to dip his head to see the buckle, up near his collar bone. It isn’t touching his throat, but when he swallows, he imagines he can feel it pressing against his Adam’s apple.

“Are you… planning to strangle me?” It’s meant to be a joke, but his voice comes out hoarse.

Jimmy adjusts the belt, slightly, and runs the dangling end through his fingers, like a caress. “That sort of thing’s never done it for me,” he says, slowly. “But you in a collar…? _That_ I could get into.”

Alastair swallows again, harder, heat flushing through him; his jeans are feeling tighter by the second. He dips his chin towards his chest, battling to control the rhythm of his breathing. Head still down, he looks up at Jimmy, suddenly feeling every drop of the champagne he’s drunk – a bit too quickly – since he stepped out of the shower.

“Okay?”

Alastair nods, and the leather of the belt – the collar? – feels stiff around his neck.

Alastair lets Jimmy back him up, slowly, until he meets something hard; the frame of the bathroom door. He holds Jimmy’s gaze as the other man lifts his hands, slowly, to meet the frame above his head. Where they’re held, pinned at the wrists by Jimmy’s left hand. With his other hand, Jimmy traces the edges of the belt at his throat, then reaches up to brush his thumb across Alastair’s lips before pushing them apart.

“Mine,” he says, low and intent, and Alastair just has time to gasp his arousal at hearing that before Jimmy’s mouth is hard against his. It’s less a kiss, more a demonstration of _mine_ ; Jimmy’s tongue penetrates him, and Alastair opens his mouth wider, letting it push further in, feeling Jimmy’s fingers press against the belt as he does. There’s no movement of their lips; only the thrusting inwards.

When Jimmy stops, they’re both breathing hard. Alastair licks his lips, tugging at the grip on his wrists, feeling the edges of the doorframe pressing into his flesh. As ever, the restriction is freeing. From somewhere – probably the bottom of a bottle of champagne, he’ll reflect, later – he finds words.

“Now you’ve got me,” he says, “what do you want to do with me?”

Jimmy grins. He draws his lips up Alastair’s jaw, to his ear. His voice is a low rumble as his spare hand drifts down Alastair’s bare chest, pops the button of his jeans. “I want to make you beg,” Jimmy says, pushing down his zip. “I want to make you cry out so loud the whole corridor hears it.”

Just a gentle brush against the straining cotton of Alastair’s pants, but he moans. He is a coil, tightly wound; but even through the euphoria of victory and alcohol he’s not giving in that easily. “I don’t beg.”

He’s pretty sure this isn’t true, anymore; but it sounds good.

“We’ll see.” Jimmy’s free hand pushes properly into Alastair’s open jeans, starts to grope him through his pants. “Not tonight, but soon. I’ll try you out. Keep you on the edge until you can’t help yourself. Until you turn into that greedy little slut we both know you are. A beautiful, begging mess.”

Alastair has to fight for breath; the words are potent, like they’re spreading under his skin, and Jimmy’s hand has only got tighter around his trapped cock. “Might surprise you. Stamina.”

Jimmy’s gaze is on Alastair’s mouth, a smug smirk on his own lips. “I’m hoping so. All the more fun wearing you down.” He kisses him, long and firm and overwhelming, then yanks Alastair’s hands down from above his head and propels him into the bathroom with a hard slap to his arse. “Now strip.”

Alastair does as he’s told with alacrity, shoving his jeans and pants down and kicking them against the far wall. By the time he’s settled himself, with his forearms braced on the cool marble counter to the right of the sink, Jimmy’s up behind him, dropping the lube on the counter and pulling his own pants off.

Like the hotel in Manchester, this place believes in mirrors: there are several around the sink, offering multiple angles on proceedings. Jimmy’s eyes, reflected, are alight with fascination as he reaches around Alastair and tugs the trailing end of the belt out from under him. Jimmy draws the end around Alastair’s neck a second time, feeding it back through the buckle; it’s a tight fit, but it goes through. Then, gently, he rotates the loop around Alastair’s neck, so the buckle now rests at Alastair’s nape – the metal cool, though not cold, warmed by prolonged contact with his skin – and the two-inch leather strap sits snug against his throat.

This time, Alastair really can feel the pressure of it when he swallows.

“Not too tight?” Alastair shakes his head; Jimmy drapes the small remaining bit of the trailing end back over Alastair’s shoulder. “Good. Want you to be able to feel it. Know who you belong to.”

Alastair feels another burst of heat in his groin, at that. He doesn’t understand why; right now, doesn’t care.

Firm hands at Alastair’s hips reposition him, until he’s at an angle to the sink. “Can you see?” says Jimmy, quietly, and Alastair nods. Part of his backside is visible, now, in the wide perspective of the right-hand mirror, and he can watch as Jimmy caresses him with bowling-roughened fingers, as he goes to work with the lube lower down, between Alastair’s legs, though Alastair feels rather than sees the cool, slippery fingers pumping in and out of him.

What he _can_ see is the makeshift collar around his neck. That he’s accepted, that he _wants_.

His face feels like it’s on fire, like there must be steam rising from it (but he knows there isn’t, he can _see_ that there isn’t), especially when Jimmy rolls on a condom and coaxes Alastair further round to the right. Alastair presses his hands against the marble counter until the flesh around his fingernails is white, and chokes back a cry as he feels himself being slowly stretched open by the head of Jimmy’s cock. He can’t see it sliding inside, but he catches glimpses of the shaft, in the mirror, as it disappears out of his view, behind the round shape of his own backside.

The whole thing is extraordinary, an overload: he’s used to seeing sheets, maybe, or a wall, Jimmy’s face, his own arms. He isn’t used to watching his own jaw tense with the strain of holding back noise, his own neck and chest flushed scarlet with exertion and need, his own eyes widening with each thrust. And he can see each thrust coming; anticipation at the sight of Jimmy’s rocking hips only increases the rush of sensation as the thick cock inside him shoves past his prostate. It’s hard and it’s fast, rapid staccato rhythm, it’s grunting and it’s slamming and it’s Jimmy’s hand closing around the belt at his neck, and Alastair’s dropping his forehead against his crossed arms but the hand is suddenly tight in his hair, pulling him back up, _Look_ , and he does look, sees himself panting and bent over and being fucked—

—but he’s not just _being fucked_ , he’s giving (almost) as good as he gets, he’s using the marble counter to help him push backwards against Jimmy, urging the other man faster and deeper, and he sees Jimmy’s own strain and abandon, sees surprise and pleasure register on those features as Alastair uses the muscles whose power he’s only just learning to appreciate to squeeze Jimmy’s cock. Sees the collar around his throat. Hears Jimmy’s moan ring out loudly in the tiny room.

Soon Jimmy’s rhythm gets more erratic and he lets go of Alastair’s hair, braces his hands against Alastair’s hips, rocks forward a couple more times and then arches backwards, releasing a sharp cry into the air; Alastair both feels and sees the other man’s thighs shaking, and holds as still as he can until he’s sure Jimmy’s stable on his feet.

Then Jimmy flops forward across Alastair’s back, and Alastair can feel the thumping of the other man’s heart and a hand groping clumsily at his groin. Rolling to free one arm, Alastair reaches between his legs and shows Jimmy exactly what he wants, the subtly different way he applies the pressure when he’s doing this for himself. Then his balls are tightening and he’s muffling his moans in his other arm, and it’s his turn to shake.

Afterwards, Jimmy brings more champagne and helps him to his feet, and Alastair cradles his mug and leans back into the other man as Jimmy takes off the belt and trails lazy kisses up the side of his face.

“Enjoyed that,” Jimmy sighs, into his ear. “Thank you.”

Alastair mumbles something that he hopes sounds vaguely like agreement; Jimmy’s arms are tight around him and it feels so good that he doesn’t trust himself not to say anything stupid, especially given how much he’s had to drink, tonight. When he glances into the mirror, straight ahead, he sees that they’re both wearing similarly dopey smiles.

“Been wanting to do that,” says Jimmy, “since that night in Manchester. Remember? With you washing your clothes in the sink?”

“I remember.” Alastair takes a mouthful of fizz, frowns at the taste of it now it’s gone warm, and passes the rest to Jimmy, who drains the mug in one gulp.

“Honestly,” says Jimmy, and the word slurs a little, “if I’d known, all those times I was thinking about making a move on you, that you’d turn out to be like this…”

If Alastair were in less of a daze, he wouldn’t try to reply to this; but he’s not and so he does. “You’d’ve run a mile?”

It’s meant to be a joke. But, to his surprise, Jimmy takes it seriously.

“Probably not,” he says, quietly. “I know it’d make me a better person if we hadn’t got involved. If— Well, it’s…”

He doesn’t finish the thought. And Alastair has to ask, though he doesn’t really want the answer and it brings a prickling to his chest just to say the words:

“Do you— Do you regret it? Getting involved?”

He feels Jimmy draw in a deep breath; sees him, in the mirror, shaking his head. “No,” he says. He huffs a laugh, then adds, “Because any time we’re in the dressing room, or out at dinner, or playing darts… apparently even when you’re doing laundry in your fucking bathroom _sink_ , I can’t keep my hands off you.” He puts the empty mug down, wraps his arms back around Alastair, and mutters into his hair, “And this way, I don’t have to.”

In the mirror, Alastair sees Jimmy close his eyes; feels breath and then lips at the nape of his neck a moment later. Softer, much softer, than he was expecting.

Fluttering replaces prickling. _Top work_ , Alastair thinks, bracing himself against the sink. _You really know how to keep it simple._

Maybe it’s the champagne, maybe it’s the post-coital afterglow, maybe it’s something else; but he breaks his private rule, then, and asks Jimmy to stay the night.

Jimmy agrees.

\--

Alastair slips out of bed early the next morning, in need of both the loo and something for his headache. Once he gets to the bathroom, he spends an uncertain amount of time sitting on the bathmat, wrapped up in a towel, drinking water and trying to convince himself that he doesn’t actually feel sick, and that all the stuff in the dressing room with Joe can't possibly have been as embarrassing as it seems in his memory.

And that Jimmy... well. Alastair isn't even going to pretend he understands what happened _there_. He doesn't want to think, right now, about what it might mean. That Jimmy might have been genuinely jealous, after all. Might _be_ jealous.

( _Mine_ , he said. Several times. What does that _mean_? Given everything?)

But he's not thinking about this. He's _not_. Jimmy won't want to acknowledge it, anyway, will he? Whatever it was.

At some point Alastair dozes off; he wakes slumped against the shower cubicle, an ache in his neck.

He wanders back out into a significantly brighter bedroom, armed with a box of painkillers and a glass of water. When he sits down on the bed, Jimmy stirs, and rolls over.

“Thought you’d left early again.”

“Too busy being hungover.” Alastair braces his elbows on his thighs, drops his head into his hands. Having his eyes open is seeming like an increasingly terrible idea. “You’re a bad influence.”

Jimmy gives a little cheer. A moment or two later, a hand settles in the small of Alastair’s back. “You all right?”

“Improving.” Alastair raises his head, with an effort, squeezing his eyes shut and blinking a few times to try to clear his vision. “You?”

Jimmy purses his lips, and shrugs. “I’ve… felt better.”

Wordlessly, Alastair reaches over to the bedside cabinet, and passes him the water and the pills. Then he lies down and pulls the covers up around him as Jimmy gulps down the entire glass in one breath. He closes his eyes, waiting for his head to realise that he’s not moving anymore.

There’s quiet for a bit, then: “You don’t look so good.”

“My stomach feels like it’s at sea. In a really bad storm.” Alastair opens one eye to squint at the other man, who’s lying on his side a couple of feet away, smiling faintly. “As someone who’s… got experience. At bad decisions. Involving alcohol.” He pauses, to swallow back nausea. “What do _you_ normally do?”

“When I’m worse for wear? Sleep. Feel sorry for myself.” Jimmy shuffles closer; starts stroking Alastair’s belly, in what’s presumably supposed to be a soothing way. “Hope someone’ll make me bacon.”

Alastair takes hold of Jimmy’s stroking hand, moves it up to his shoulder, where it seems less likely to set off something unfortunate. He closes his eyes again. “Well, one out of three ain’t bad.”

“Yeah. I mean, if _only_ we were in a place where people would make us breakfast and deliver it to the door. Oh, wait.”

“No.” Alastair bats at Jimmy’s hand, admonishingly (but not _too_ hard; he doesn’t want it to stop stroking). “Two meals to my room in an evening is one thing. Two full Englishes at seven AM or whatever it is… no.”

“So we order one. The biggest they do. With extra bacon because it’s for the winning captain.”

Sheets rustle. The hand disappears from his shoulder. Alastair whines, but it doesn’t come back.

“Hel _lo_ , yes, I’m calling from room, uh… one four five…” 

Alastair sits bolt upright – then wishes he hadn’t, when his stomach lurches – and glares at Jimmy, who ignores him and carries on speaking into the phone.

Alastair slides back down under the sheets, grumbling to himself until Jimmy’s done. Then he grumbles out loud. “If somebody sees it arriving, I’ll get reported to the fitness guys or something.”

Jimmy snorts. “ _No-one’s_ going to be out on that corridor at this time in the morning after a series win.”

Alastair folds his arms. “ _I_ would be.”

“Not this morning, though.”

“No, I know. I’ve got a bad influence in my bed, that’s why.”

“Mmm.” Jimmy’s arm curls around Alastair’s chest, blithely disregarding the message of Alastair’s own folded arms. “Sounds like fun.”

Alastair sighs. “I would’ve thought I could rely upon _you_ to respect a bit of grumpiness. But _oh no_ , you have to go and be _chirpy_ , don’t you?”

Jimmy kisses his shoulder. Alastair can _feel_ his bloody smile. “I know, hangovers are rubbish.” Kisses trail along his shoulder and up the side of his neck. “But fundamentally, you’re just not a grumpy person.”

Alastair rolls his eyes. “Takes one to know one,” he mutters, but he’s turning his face to meet Jimmy’s lips anyway, so basically he’s already given in.

By the time they’re done, Jimmy’s leaning over him, Alastair’s unfolded his arms, and maybe there’s a grudging half-smile on his face.

Jimmy grunts his satisfaction. “That’s better.”

“Like I said, no respect for grumpiness.”

Hazel eyes twinkle. “What can I say? You were just looking very kissable.”

Perhaps wisely, Jimmy doesn’t give Alastair chance to ask exactly which part of him being of pale, red-eyed and nauseated made him attractive, by the simple expedient of kissing him again.

At some point there’s a low growl, like thunder overhead.

“Was that you, or me?”

“Me. Worked up an appetite, last night.” Jimmy yawns, rolling over onto his back. “Good job there’s bacon on the way.”

They lie like that, then – not quite touching, in comfortable silence – for a while, until a knock at the door rouses Alastair from a doze. Jimmy starts to sit up, but Alastair stops him. “My room,” he reminds him. He digs out his pyjamas and shuffles to the door, accepts the food without letting the guy who’s delivering it take a step inside. Alastair sets the tray up on the little table, while Jimmy sorts out some tea.

“Only one problem,” Alastair says, against a background of growing noise from the kettle. “One meal, one set of cutlery.”

“Huh.” Jimmy shrugs. “We could eat with our fingers, I guess.”

“No, I know.” Alastair crosses the room, pulls out his suitcase, digs in a side pocket, and finds what he’s looking for. “I’ve got spares.”

“You travel with a knife and fork? Is that some sort of farming custom, or…”

“Nope.” Alastair stops, halfway to the table, looking down at the cutlery in his hand. “They’re from… from the hotel we stayed at for Headingley, in June. Let’s just say I wasn’t completely with it when I checked out. Ended up accidentally, uh… well, stealing these. I’m going to give them back,” he adds, hastily, “next time we’re there.”

For a while, the only sound is a teaspoon clinking against the inside of a mug.

“Been quite a summer, hasn’t it?” says Jimmy, quietly.

“Not over yet,” Alastair says, absently. He can’t drag his gaze away from his hands, and what they’re holding; wasn’t really prepared to be hit with all the memories, this morning. He frowns. “I’m sorry. For Headingley. That whole series, the way it ended. What you had to go through.”

“Wasn’t your fault. You didn’t bowl that delivery.”

“I know, I just… Well. Captain. Should’ve…” He doesn’t know how to finish that thought. “And all the Jadeja thing, the trial and everything, maybe if I’d been a stronger leader, spoken to MS about it—”

“Ali.” Jimmy’s beside him; he’s taking the knife and fork from Alastair’s hands, and then he’s holding Alastair’s hands between his own. “Told you before. Not everything is your— You wouldn’t take all the credit for us winning the series, would you?”

Alastair looks up at him, startled. “No! No, of course not.”

“Well, then.” Jimmy’s smiling; the lines around his eyes are out in force. “Why take all the blame when we lose?”

Alastair opens his mouth, but doesn’t know what to say. “Oh,” he manages, eventually.

Jimmy pulls him into his arms. “And the Jadeja thing, seriously. That was me and him. Nothing to do with you.”

Alastair hesitates, then lets himself lean into Jimmy; lets himself accept some sanctuary.

He sighs. “Like you said, quite a summer.”

An Indian summer: late-season sunshine; warmth when you wouldn’t expect it. Seems about right.

Jimmy clears his throat. “In retrospect, even that last day at Headingley doesn’t seem quite so bad. I got something quite good out of it.” Alastair actually feels Jimmy cringe. His chuckle sounds a bit strangled. “That was so soppy. I can’t believe I just said that.”

Alastair chuckles. “Don’t worry, grumpiest man alive,” he says, reaching round to give the other man a hearty pat on the backside. “Secret’s safe with me.” He lifts his head so he can look Jimmy in the eye; for what, he’s not sure. “Anyway, bacon?”

Jimmy nods. “Bacon.”

 

\-- FIN --

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... yeah. There you go. Phew.
> 
> Um.
> 
> Where to begin?
> 
> I should, of course, begin by thanking everyone who has read this far, whether you started the series today, with Snapshots back in September 2014, or somewhere in between. Your comments and kudos and tumblr messages and subscriptions have meant a huge amount to me; more than you can know. (Although if you've posted fic of your own, you probably _do_ know!) [This post reblogged by one of the cricket fam recently kind of sums it up for me](http://daisyavalin.tumblr.com/post/139809879344/on-feedback-and-perspective): honestly, whether your feedback is three words or 300, whether it comes on the day the fic's posted or a year later, it's all so, so welcome. I write because I enjoy it, but knowing that other people are getting something out of it too is what makes me post it here, instead of just writing for my Word doc, so... thanks <3
> 
> The fact that Jimmy being kind of jealous of Joe grew from a throwaway running joke into a proper plot point (and maybe, just maybe, a sign of something) can be laid squarely at the feet of plumjaffas, who suggested the idea of Alastair playing on Jimmy's possessiveness to get a rise out of him, without realising that the person he happened to pick - Joe - was the worst possible choice. If I have time over the next few days I'll do some linking to earlier fic, aka Jimmy's Greatest Jealous Hits, but for now I'll leave you with [these pics and its original caption](http://kutubiyya.tumblr.com/post/136833807852/alastair-is-perfect-lmao-jimmy-keeping-joe-away), which kind of sums up my thinking. :D
> 
> The final thing I should say is that even if 'An Indian Summer' is over, this probably isn't the end of my Jimmy/Cooky. I mean, arguably I should quit while I'm somewhat ahead. But. There's a ton of unresolved stuff in here, isn't there? ;) I think I'm probably going to continue, albeit in a slightly different form - something closer to 'Snapshots' than the (ahem) blow-by-blow account of AIS. I've already written some of what comes next - and, judging from the comments this fic has been getting over the past few weeks, one of the plotlines I'm planning to pick up in there (what Broady knows, and how Jimmy's going to deal with that) is something some of you guys are also interested in, so... watch this space?
> 
> Aaaand that's enough from me for now. Next week, I hope, there should be some more Titch and Woakes fighting crime...


End file.
